Open defecation: Lessons from India’s 100m toilet revolution

$20bn expended on building toilets Our reporter recently joined journalists from other African countries on a visit to India to study how the country eradicated open defecation, a trip facilitated by the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), a New Delhi, India – based research and advocacy body.   India was reputed to have the […]

• $20bn expended on building toilets

Our reporter recently joined journalists from other African countries on a visit to India to study how the country eradicated open defecation, a trip facilitated by the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), a New Delhi, India – based research and advocacy body.

 

India was reputed to have the highest population of people practicing open defecation. The country long struggled with the challenge of sanitation despite having a sanitation programme since 1970.

It was thought that if India failed to stop the practice, it would be difficult for other nations having the same challenge.

India shares some similarities with African countries in terms of vast lands, high population, open defecation practice and environmental challenges among others. The approach to solving these challenges are doubtlessly different.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO) and UNICEF joint monitoring report of 2012, India held the record of 626 million, the highest number of people practicing open defecation.

This was followed by Indonesia (63 million), Pakistan (40 million), Ethiopia (38 million), Nigeria (34 million) and Sudan (19 million).

The report stated that some 2.5 billion people lacked improved sanitation, while 1.1 billion people (15 per cent of the global population) were practicing open defecation out of which 949 million of them lived in rural areas.

It was said that out of the 10 persons defecating in the open globally, six where Indians and as of 2014, India accounted for 60 per cent of the world’s open defecation practice.

Though India’s number of open defecators (626 million) doubled the number of the next 18 countries combined, the story later changed ON October 2, 2014 as India declared itself open defecation-free. Since then, the focus has now shifted to Africa.

 

Why people practice open defecation

Open defecation simply put is the human practice of defecating outside rather than into a toilet. People may choose fields, bushes, forests or rivers to relieve themselves when pressed.

While some have attributed it to lack of latrines at home, some experts have said it is more of an attitudinal problem.

The Director General of the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), New Delhi, an India based research and advocacy body, Sunitra Narain, said open defecation is a way people are used to.

“So, it is not just important to build toilets but making people understand why they should use toilets,” Sunitra said, adding that the organization had been working to highlight issues, concerns and practices related to rural sanitation in India and Africa.

The Additional Secretary at the Indian Ministry of Jal Shakti (Department of Drinking Water and Sanitation), Arun Baroka, corroborated this position, saying open defecation was a behavioural issue because people are used to the practice for ages and since they have land, they just go in and defecate.

“And because they do not have toilets, “people prefer to go to open fields where the crops are but it was a big problem particularly for ladies and the elderly,” he said.

Many times, open defecation was also associated with religious practices in India. People preferred to go near a river to defecate and then wash themselves in the River even though the so-called ‘holy river’ had been polluted.

How did India achieve the status?

For proper sanitation, India flagged-off a national programme called Swarat Bharat Mission, meaning “Clean India” on October 2, 2014.

Launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, it became the most successful programme in the country by achieving its target in five years.

The target was set for October 2, 2019 to pay tribute to Mahatma Gandhi on his 150th post humous birthday.

The programme which was tagged the world’s largest behavioural change programme has four pillars of political leadership, partnerships, public financing and people’s participation.

 

100 million toilets revolution

According to the Additional Secretary, Baroka, India built 100 million toilets in its 600,000 villages and another 6.3 million in its cities.

He said the government engaged in a participatory approach to make the project appreciated by the people. The government provided 60 percent while the state governments provided 40 per cent of the fund.

He noted that each household was given 12,000 rupees to assist them in building a toilet at home.  He noted that though everything cannot be 100 per cent accurate, by their estimates, “By 2019, over 93 per cent of the country’s households had access to toilets in over 93 per cent of the villages people do not defecate in the open, over 96 per cent who had access also used toilets, suggesting an important change in behavior.”

 

The campaign before ODF status

According to the Director General of CSE, it is a basic human right to be able to excrete waste in a clean environment, saying, open defecation is a wicked problem because it affects gender and toilets or clean water as fundamental rights.

She said poverty is connected to sanitation as nobody would want to defecate in the open.  Part of the Indian campaign against open defecation was a local monitoring committee which used to call out and shame anyone found to be practicing open defecation.

She said another form of campaign was that girls started turning down marriage proposals from men who didn’t have toilets in their homes. This is because they felt that if there were toilets at home, the women wouldn’t have to risk their lives going into the woods.

Sunitra Narain said; “India has done 100 per cent toilets revolution but it has not been able to fix where wastes disposed go to, or managed and to look at where a city got its water in the past and now, and to look at where the excreta goes and when it goes back to water it means there will be pollution and health issues.”

Churu as a case study

Churu, a district in Rajasthan, also known as the gateway to the Thar Desert, is one of the first to be declared open defecation-free in 2014.  Churu is about 280km from Delhi, en route to Bikaner. It has a 22,000 population in the rural communities where 56,000 families live.

Churu is encircled by large shifting sand dunes with scanty vegetation.  In Churu, there is little rainfall during the year, with about 381 mm of precipitation annually.

But the government, realizing that there is no water in Churu, came up with an initiative to build a water reservoir for individual homes to enable them have water flush the toilets they were building and for other needs.

Collector (Chief Administrator) of Churu District, Sandesh Nayak, said the district is one of the water-scarcity areas and less agricultural activities in the country, but it was the first to be declared open defecation-free.

He said the community’s voluntarism and active participation in the national sanitation campaign carried out with the theme: “Choco Churu,” Clean Churu, has enabled the district to become a model.

He said they came up with an initiative which started with the demand to have toilets and use them but that availability of water was a problem.

He added that they developed a project to build water reservoirs for households to enable them get rainwater in the two months of rainfall in the area.

He said the 20,000m water reservoirs were built where they would be able to get 300 millimeter rainfall to use throughout the year.

The state government according to him provided 90 per cent of the funds while benefiting individual provided 10 per cent.

He said 85 per cent of toilets have been built and they are now working on building 206 community toilets in the district with 20 per cent of the fund coming from the community while government provides the 80 per cent.

The collector said the project was a success because of the involvement of communities and volunteers and that measures are on ground to monitor and maintain the toilets for sustainability.

A beneficiary of the reservoir, Ram Swarop Jaht, said the construction and funding of water reservoirs for every family had played a vital role in achieving sanitation in the area and reduced the stress of going a distance to look for water.

Women group speaks

Twenty-five-year-old Suman Jat, a new bride in Churu, said she was used to toilet in her home and was lucky to marry from a home where they have a toilet and that is why she supported the campaign against open defecation.

She said pregnant women face more problems because they have to go out at nights and mornings.

For 40 years old Shakuntala  Jaat, “When we go out for open defecation, we always stand just to look out for men who are always around, and we can hardly finish.”

“Initially, we go out as early as 4.00 am in a group to defecate and in cases where we felt like relieving ourselves at night, we always suppress it because of the fear of being beaten by snakes and scorpions which is common in the area.”

She said the awareness campaign of Chokho Churu (Clean Churu) was so high that no one resisted it and demand was generated so they formed a women group that triggered the movement for toilets in every home.

After the campaign persisted and the revolution of toilet building continued, the women group now go out in fours to catch people still engaging in open defecation practice.

On ODF, she said the problem of diarrhea which is y prevalent among kids has drastically reduced, adding, “We don’t have to wake up early and no more flies flocking around the environment as the sanitation has generally improved.”

 

How to become open defecation-free

The Programme Manager, Rural Water Waste Management at CSE, Shushmita Sengupta, highlighted the pre-requisites to achieving open defecation-free status.

“First, you need a strong political and administrative will. People are the sole decision makers on how and where to make toilets. The rich lend money to the poor in the community to build toilets and pay back later.

“Local people were trained to build the toilets so as to avoid giving contracts to outsiders who may charge exorbitant prices,” she said.

Sengupta further explained that water supply must be fixed before building toilets. Teaching the locals how to maintain the toilets is also key to sustenance so they don’t have to rely on government when issues arise, she added.

 

Success story

The level of diarrhea reduced, deaths and malnourishment also reduced in India following the successful campaign again open defecation.

The attitude of people towards open defecation has changed. Toilets make life easier for women who are the most vulnerable.

 

How Nigeria has fared?

In November 2018, President Muhammadu Buhari declared a state of emergency on Nigeria’s water, sanitation and hygiene sectors due to the high prevalence of water borne diseases in the country.

Nigeria’s Minister of Water Resources, Suleiman Adamu, had in October 2019 shortly after India was declared open defecation-free, said Nigeria now occupies number one in the world.

“We are on the brink of being ranked first globally, as approximately 47 million people do not have access to sanitation services in its most basic form,” the minister said.

However, a report by the CSE noted that the WASH-NORM Survey of 2018 showed what 47 million Nigerians defecate in the open and that 30 per cent of people in rural areas and 11 percent in urban areas do not have toilets. The report showed that 38 per cent of the poorest people and two per cent of the rich people go out to defecate.

Despite the launch of a national roadmap towards making Nigeria open defecation-free by 2025 in 2016, only minimal progress has been achieved in the implementation of the roadmap.

However, only 14 local government areas out of the 774 across the country are said to have so far been certified as open defecation-free, according to the national ODF protocol.

 

Lessons for Nigeria

Nigeria could certainly learn lessons from India in this regard.

Nigeria has vast lands like India and similar concerns and challenges.

“Whether it is open defecation or the devastating effects of climate change, we struggle and toil with the same kinds of environmental problems and with similar impacts,” said Sunitra Narain. What made the campaign for ODF succeed in India was largely political support from the highest level in the country. It also focused on behavioural change -nudging people to use the toilets built just as the government provided subsidies to people to build toilets.

The India ODF campaign particularly deployed resources up to the tune of $20 billion and some 12,000 rupees (N60,000) was given to families as subsidies to build toilets.

It focused on excreta management, constructing toilets with twin pits that had honeycombs for decomposition and ‘retention’ time.

The programme also saw the construction of waste management systems in villages that combine human wastes with organized waste to allow reuse of water.

The twin model toilet with indigenous technology to ensure that pollution is addressed to avoid the hazard of health burdens due to polluted water and drainage system was adopted to achieve the status of open defecation-free staus in India.