Bihar village shuns toilets as they bring ‘bad luck’
Priyanka Devi is expecting her first child and the doctor wants her to eat well during the pregnancy. But she deliberately cuts down on food during the day. “I have no choice. Eating during the day would mean venturing into the fields in the night to attend nature’s call,” says the 24-year-old housewife.
For that matter, no house in her Ghazipur village of Bihar’s Nawada district has a toilet. It causes immense inconvenience for the 2,000odd residents, but a superstition that constructing a toilet will invite ill luck and perhaps a tragedy, stops them from having one.
The superstition took roots in 1984 when Siddheshwar Singh, an affluent farmer of the villager, lost his son to a mysterious disease while he was constructing a toilet at home. It got further ingrained following the death of another villager Ramparvesh Sharma’s son in 1996 while a toilet was being built at their home.
Since then, villagers have been reluctant to construct toilets, despite the government’s Swachh Bharat campaign against open defecation with the objective of promoting cleanliness and improving hygiene. “Life comes first, hygiene can wait,” says Uday Kumar, a Ghazipur resident.
Earlier this week, the local block development officer was involved in a road accident shortly after visiting Ghazipur in an effort to popularise better sanitation.
Not willing to take chances, residents like Priyanka Devi therefore make difficult compromises such as eating less.
Her’s is an affluent family with a refrigerator, TV, inverter and air cooler. But a toilet’s absence has put to jeopardy the marriage prospects of her young brother-in-law. The family of a prospective bride backed out recently after finding that the Ghazipur family goes to the fields to relieve themselves.