Clean up

On the World Toilet Day (November 19), India clearly needs to rethink some fundamental issues. While we have made progress in toilet construction under the Swachh Bharat Mission, by achieving 71.54 per cent toilet coverage from 38.70 per cent in 2014, half of India’s population still defecates in the open. It would be useful to independently assess as to how many of the new toilets have water and are cleaned regularly. And most importantly, how can we handle wastewater better — which is the theme of this year’s World Toilet Day.

When we look at history, two ancient cities come to mind — Edo (now Kyoto) in Japan and Rome in Italy. The people of Rome drained all wastewater into their water bodies, and eventually an entire civilisation died. The people of Edo, on the other hand, cleaned all the wastewater, and put in place sanitation systems that enabled them to develop.

In India today, all wastewater goes into lakes, rivers and ponds. In Delhi, for instance, 90 per cent of urban households have sewage systems whose wastewater, not all of which is treated, gets dumped directly into the Yamuna. Then we spend thousands of crores of rupees to clean the river and purify water. Whether it is Mithi in Maharashtra or Kali Bein in Punjab, the list of dying rivers is growing. Poor management of wastewater disposal is also the cause of innumerable water-borne diseases including diarrhoea, which alone claims over 328 lives every day, according to the WHO.

We must realise that we belong to an ecosystem where recycling is a fundamental principle. Even in small ecosystems, communities have shown this is possible. For instance, wastewater is discharged along the 10-km stretch of the Musi river in Hyderabad, which is then to cultivate rice. Germany, the leading European Union exporter of wastewater and sewage technologies, finds innumerable ways to use wastewater and sewage after treatment; in many — as do many countries that use recycled sewage for cooling systems for thermal power plants.

According to the Central Pollution Control Board, some 61,948 million litres per day was generated in 2015 . How do we integrate this flow into our natural ecosystem? By conservative estimates, only 30 per cent of India’s wastewater is recycled . There is clearly a need to step up the funds allocated under the Swachh Bharat Mission for managing and treating wastewater.

Behaviour change communication should go hand in hand with toilet construction and toilet adoption if we are to see communities in their entirety become open defecation free. That is where the community led total sanitation model can make this change sustainable. It is also important to make toilet construction viable for the poor, with affordable microfinancing packages to supplement government funding and promote home ownership. We would need to find creative solutions to hasten the process — going beyond naming and shaming persons defecating in the open .

Social initiatives with a strong local presence and knowledge of local communities can help develop solutions that address the specific sanitation needs of a community. Including sanitation services that are in sync with the local ecosystems will go a long way in tackling the challenge. Efforts should also be taken to rope in corporates to play an active role in wastewater management.

The writer is the CEO and National Director of World Vision India