More toilet talk vital for a cleaner India
Nirmal Bharat Abhiyan, Swachchh Bharat’s predecessor, also focused more on toilet construction and less on making sure that people bought into toilet usage.
What was the result? Let’s rewind to the mobile phone/toilet analogy. The crucial difference between mobile usage and toilet usage in India is the “need” perception. India’s mobile or cellphone revolution happened as growing numbers of people in this emerging economy started seeing the cellphone as a “must-have” and a passport to upward mobility, and were willing to spend money to buy the gizmo, even if they had low incomes. The cellphone has emerged as a gadget of necessity in metros as much in small towns and villages.
Is there a similar buyin for toilet use across India? If not, why?
Some years ago, I did a review of research studies commissioned by Unicef to understand this. The insights were useful. Traditionally, open defecation had social acceptance in India as in many other developing countries. Unsurprisingly, any campaign to promote toilet use, safe disposal of excreta, etc, faces huge resistance from many households and communities who consider toilets unclean. Many argue that since open fields in rural areas are available, where’s the need to build or use toilets? Rising literacy and exposure are denting these attitudes. But the fact remains there are still millions in this country who are illiterate and toilet construction alone
Meeting sanitation targets is important but targets alone won’t mean much unless the people buy into the messages behind the toilet talk. Convince people — that’s where the energy needs to be invested. isn’t enough to sell “sanitation” to them. Even many among those functionally literate need to be persuaded.
So what’s to be done? Acknowledge that access to a toilet does not always translate into usage or maintenance of toilets. Instead of focusing on just newly-built toilets, count broken toilets and those with erratic or non-existent water supply. Factor in the ground reality — because a house has a toilet does not mean everyone in that house uses it. Check who is really using the toilet and who is not, and why. Acknowledge that improved sanitation is still not a top priority for many households, as they don’t see toilets as a passport to upward mobility and better economic status. Feedback from the field in the earlier Nirmal Bharat Abhiyan showed that while communication campaigns helped drive home the nexus between using a toilet and washing hands with soap after defecation, before meals and before handling food, large numbers of people across India didn’t fully link specific diseases like diarrhoea with continuing open defecation.
There’s a lesson here — communication messages must be sharper; they also need to sledgehammer the point that even if a small segment of the population continues to practice open defecation, the risk of bacteriological contamination and disease may continue to be high.
The bottomline — meeting sanitation targets is important but targets alone won’t mean much unless the people themselves buy into the messages behind the toilet talk. Convince people — that’s where the money and energy need to be invested.
The writer focuses on development issues in India and emerging economies. She can be reached at patralekha.chatterjee @gmail.com