‘India is drowning in its own excreta’

[FarCenter]

Sixty per cent of the "global total" who do not have access to toilets live in India, and hence are forced to defecate in the open. In actual numbers, sixty per cent translates to 626 million. This makes India the number one country in the world where open defecation is practised. Indonesia with 63 million is a far second!

At 949 million in 2010 worldwide, vast majority of people practising open defecation live in rural areas. Though the number of rural people practising open defecation has reduced by 234 million in 2010 than in 1990, “those that continue to do so tend to be concentrated in a few countries, including India,” notes the 2012 update report of UNICEF and the World Health Organisation (WHO).

...

More than half of the 2.5 billion people without improved sanitation live in India or China. The high figure prevails even as four out of 10 people who have gained access to improved sanitation since 1990 live in these two countries.

“Rapidly-modernising India is drowning in its own excreta,” notes the New Delhi-based Sunita Narain, Director General of the Centre for Science and Environment in a Comment piece published on June 14 in Nature.

http://www.thehindu.com/health/policy-and-issues/article3524150.ece

[Wednesdays]

1. Priorities, priorities...

If India is "rapidly-modernising," it's not in some very crucial areas.

[renate]

39. and (not surprisingly) this is especially a problem for women

(I had to leave a few paragraphs out to keep it down to four, so a little background: Women have to pay to use the public toilets at all; men only have to pay to defecate. One of the women in the article earns $27 a month, so paying even a nickel or dime to use a toilet really adds up.)

Like men, women in villages often must urinate outdoors, in fields. But unlike them, they sometimes endure taunting and even sexual assault. Many rural women relieve themselves in small groups, before dawn, to protect against harassment.

At the northern rim of the city, inside a slum known as Shivaji Nagar, at least 350,000 people — perhaps twice that many by some estimates — live pressed together beside one of the city’s largest dumps. The exact number of public toilets is unclear but, by one estimate, the ratio is no better than 1 toilet for every 300 people. Women must adapt their daily routines: Many visit the bathroom early in the morning to avoid lines and leering. They avoid drinking much water. And they carry change.

snip

Ms. Sheikh and other advocates saw an opportunity to raise awareness among women. Women now constitute almost half the city’s work force, yet many of them work in jobs with no access to a toilet. In various parts of the city, including slums, activists have gone door to door, collecting more than 50,000 signatures supporting their demands that the local government stop charging women to urinate, build more toilets, keep them clean, provide sanitary napkins and a trash can, and hire female attendants.

Dr. Kamaxi Bhati, a physician and a researcher, linked the toilet situation in Mumbai directly to female health problems, especially a high incidence of urinary tract and bladder infections. Dr. Bhati said drinking water was vital to stave off such infections, yet many women tried to reduce water intake to limit how often they had to urinate. Not drinking enough water is doubly dangerous, given that temperatures can reach triple digits in Mumbai.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/15/world/asia/in-mumbai-a-campaign-against-restroom-injustice.html?pagewanted=2&_r=2&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss

[Systematic Chaos]

2. But hey! They got call centers and iPads and a SHIT-TON of our jobs!

Get it? SHIT-TON?



Fuck 'em. I'll care when the jobs come back.

[Zalatix]

5. Caring about America's unemployed is xenophobia.

On a serious note, though, if India's government learned how to raise their standard of living without bleeding us dry, it would become too expensive to outsource jobs there.

But they don't want to, because people who squat in the street make for very very cheap labor.

[fujiyama]

10. Bleeding us dry?

Spare me. It's our own fucking elites bleeding us of jobs. But it's always easier blaming someone else isn't it? Especially if they're brown. The right likes to do it mainly with hispanics. With the "professional" left, it's good 'ole educated brown folks that earn the wrath.

[Zalatix]

12. What about all the BROWN people here who can't get work? I guess they don't matter, either?

Why don't YOU spare me? The bleeding of America hurts America's brown people more than it hurts America's white people. Look at the unemployment statistics.

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

18. Oh get off it...

Outsourcing is barely 1% of Indian GDP and the largest customers for Indian outsourcers are their own government and businesses. Most people in India couldn't tell you what outsourcing is, much less have personally appropriated themselves an American's jerb.

[Zalatix]

19. With all due respect, save your lecture for someone else.

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

21. with all due respect, get new material

Dialectical zero-sum nonsense projected upon the 6.5 billion people who aren't Americans is getting tiresome.

[Zalatix]

22. No. Not just no, but HELL no.

Offshoring is a terrible attack on America's working class. I will fight back against this until the day the people who sent our jobs overseas are run out of this country or put in prison for the devastation they have inflicted upon our economy.

And you have not just me to worry about. Most of America is now on my side on this issue.

Game on.

[Sen. Walter Sobchak]

24. So, you can't seperate the gross economic activity of 6.5 billion people from outsourcing?

I don't even know what to call this, national narcissism perhaps?

[lunatica]

43. It's called Xenophobia

Hatred and/or fear of foreigners.

It's something the other side foments to make us hate others rather than know the reality of what they are doing.
Lots of people fall for it.

[BOG PERSON]

46. don't you know the working class has no country?

[Posteritatis]

33. Yep. (nt)

[FarCenter]

40. I believe that a substantial amount of outsourcing is due to US/UK policy

Officialdom encouraged US corporations to outsource work to India in order to woo India and to better relations with India as a South Asian bulwark against Islam and against China.

However, there is no possibility that the majority of Indians will ever join the developed world.

India is a prototype for the future of global civilization -- resource poor, over populated, with a thin layer of rich and sophisticated elites ruling over various descending ranks of populations, and the bulk of humanity in pretty abject poverty.

[JI7]

11. the ones without Toilets aren't the ones with call centers, ipads etc.

india is 2 worlds. the wealth gap is huge.

[wickerwoman]

17. Yes, by all means.

"Fuck" the people who live in a world of grinding, hopeless poverty you're clearly either incapable of comprehending or too completely soul-deadened by your cocoon of first-world crap that all empathy is beyond you. They stole "your" job by busting their ass twelve hours a day to be able to afford electricity, indoor plumbing and a 1,800 calorie a day diet so clearly they deserve all the misery they've experienced.

Why focus any anger at all on the companies who are exploiting them and who are responsible for the off-shoring? It's so much easier to hate on some poor bastard who lives in metal shipping container, craps in a bucket and owns one set of clothes.

[Zalatix]

20. What we want to say about the companies themselves is probably ILLEGAL.

The word 'guillotine' comes to mind.

[Systematic Chaos]

30. Please allow me to apologize for the tone of my post.

I went way overboard with the anger and bad attitude.

There was a lot of in my post and I failed to use that smiley. I actually do care about those people living in such poverty, very much. And in truth it is the corporations I'm really pissed at.

I didn't edit the post, but again this is my apology for it.

[Posteritatis]

35. Mea culpas that straightforward are rare here; that was refreshing.

[wickerwoman]

44. No worries.

The sad truth is that with DU lately it's damn hard to tell when people are being sarcastic or not, even when it should be obvious.

[treestar]

32. People here without jobs have toilets

Last edited Sat Jun 16, 2012, 09:14 AM - Edit history (1)

You are laughing at people who don't have toilets? And claiming they have all that other stuff? That's just callous.

[Zalatix]

51. Not if they're homeless.

[gkhouston]

3. So is Meta. n/t

[WingDinger]

4. Talk like that will get you banned from speaking in Congress.

[JDPriestly]

6. And the 1% wants to see that happen here.

If we don't have jobs, we soon won't have plumbing. Jobs and plumbing go together.

[pennylane100]

7. It really sucks not to have access to a toilet. Even an outdoors one would be OK.

I remember growing up, when our family business went bankrupt, our lifestyle changed somewhat. We moved to a small house without a bathroom but it had an outdoor toilet. I used to hate using it but I cannot imagine how awful it would be to have no toilet at all.

India's has prospered greatly with the arrival of all the new technology. Unfortunately, it is held back by a rigid caste system that still lingers and a culture of corruption that is hard to control. We should pay attention because that is where we are headed if we do not stop the corporations from ruining our country.

I do not want to have to use an outdoor toilet again, so vote democrat. That would be a great bumper sticker.

[Egalitarian Thug]

8. Hey now! India has its own billionaires to worry about. Leave India alone, you meanies! n/t

[flvegan]

9. Please, nobody tell Jeremy Clarkson.

I can't deal with the Top Gear shaming again.

[bhikkhu]

13. Its not necessarily as bad as all that

http://humanurehandbook.com/ Poop is one essential of any sustainable agricultural society, in the long term.

...and for the majority of human history, people would have been appalled at the idea of someone pooping inside their own house, where they eat and sleep.

[XemaSab]

14. I know there are several groups in Haiti working on turning waste into fertilizer

http://www.oursoil.org/

[cliffordu]

16. I just posted my link to the Humanure Handbook below - and then saw yours...

Great minds.......

[Confusious]

23. I'm sure they would have been appalled

if the poop just stayed there.

The amazing thing about indoor plumbing is that it takes the poop out of your house.

[NutmegYankee]

48. People routinely pooped in the house in the past

They just used chamber pots and the like.

[cliffordu]

15. Composting toilets are easy to make, use and

can completely prevent polluting groundwater.

Too bad no one seems to take the idea seriously.

http://humanurehandbook.com/


Read the book before judging the idea too harshly.

I thought it was weird at first, too.......then I read the book.

If I ever go live in the woods again I'll make one for sure.

[Confusious]

25. Just out of curiosity

How do they deal with pathogens that can be transferred when using human waste as fertilizer?

[XemaSab]

27. In the project in Haiti that I linked to

they're scrupulous about getting the temperature in the pile to 125 degrees.

[cliffordu]

38. The way regular composting works - heat.

If you mix peat moss or the like with the waste - green plant material - it will generate enough heat to kill the pathogens - Hay barns can burst into flame if the hay is too green when baled and stored....

You have to turn the stacks of waste/green plant material a couple times to get all the material into the center of the stack where the heat is.....basically it cooks for over a year.

This guy says that he has the finished product tested yearly at the local college and there are no pathogens, aerobic or anaerobic that would not appear in regular soil from that region.

Incredibly enough, these toilets and the process of turning/cooking do NOT smell.

Use of the toilets indoors is simple - take your poo, cover it with peat moss (or any green plant material, iirc) and you are golden.

When the bucket is full you take it outside, add it too your stack and cover with a little more plant material.

This guy has been feeding his family produce grown in this humus for over 20 years and NONE of them have ever become ill as a result, and have never developed parasites or any ill effect whatsoever.

He gives what his family doesn't use to neighbors.

[Blue_In_AK]

26. My brother had one of those when he lived in Bush Alaska.

It worked good.

[DCKit]

36. +1

Instead of a problem, it could be a valuable resource.

[LuvNewcastle]

28. I'll be leaving India out of any future travel plans.

I'm not sure what would be worse, smelling shit or seeing people taking a shit in front of me.

[CTyankee]

47. Me, too, and it is sad. I would love to see that country but I could not bear to see such

out and out misery and suffering. I cannot understand why India's government allows such a dire situation to exist...

[BOG PERSON]

49. they're counting on the costs of doing business going up

in china + s.e. asia. leaving india as one of the few places left to set up shop. the indian government has actually engendered a massive surplus population, a rock-bottom standard of living for most ppl, a society where the worst abuses of feudalism and capitalism coexist harmoniously, a supremely corrupt/corruptible official apparatus, etc. because that is what they think appeals to international capital.

what they forget is that the asian tiger coutnries actually invested in things like land reform, infrastructure and educating the popular classes, which is a major part of what made these places attractive to foreign investors - and not only, as the indias brahminical elites would like to believe, the cheapness of human life.

[Quantess]

29. THOSE people are kicking USA's asses?

You have got to be shitting me...oops... I mean kiddng me.

[Posteritatis]

34. It's like a country with 1,200 million citizens isn't a monolithic entity! Amazing! (nt)

[hobbit709]

31. Their holy river, the Ganges, is an open sewer.

[Sirveri]

50. Yes it is, saw an episode of Vanguard on that.

The reporter looked like he was going to puke, and the water was black with filth while people were actively shitting on the river banks (and washing their clothing in it).

[Aerows]

37. I won't be drinking the water

If I go to any of those countries.... Ewww.

[BOG PERSON]

41. that's one thing you can't outsource: indoor plumbing!

[YellowRubberDuckie]

42. I know several people who have done missions in Asia.

It's a normal occurrence in the rural areas of most of Asia, and in some cities. It would be a big deal to see someone drop trough and take a dump in front of me, not caring if I saw or not. I'm not going anywhere without regular access to a toilet. I'm pretty attached to my shower too, but especially the toilet, as I have IBS and am irregular and frequent. I feel horrible for those people. They bathe in that water in India. It's considered holy, even though they piss and shit in it everyday. It's just disgusting and sad.