India aims to eliminate open defecation by Oct 2019
Government aims to eliminate open defecation by Oct 2019
MUMBAI: The Indian government has rejected criticism of its ambitious sanitation program by a United Nations official who said lower-caste communities had their rights violated by being left to clean toilets built in a nationwide drive. Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, or Clean India Mission, with much fanfare after he took office in 2014. The main aim is to eliminate open defecation by October 2019 by building individual and public toilets.
But activists say the campaign has failed to end the practice of manual scavenging, or clearing faeces by hand, and has even exacerbated the problem because the toilets are not connected to water supplies or the sewage system. The UN special rapporteur on the human rights to safe drinking water and sanitation affirmed those observations. The emphasis on building toilets should not “contribute to violating fundamental rights of others, such as those engaged in manual scavenging, or ethnic minorities and people living in remote rural areas,” Leo Heller said in a statement on Friday.
“Eliminating open defecation is not only about building latrines, but requires adequate methods for behavior change, and sufficient water supply is a pre-requisite for the sustainable and safe use of adequate, low-cost latrines.” The Indian government dismissed Heller’s “sweeping judgments” as “either factually incorrect, based on incomplete information, or grossly misrepresent (ing) the situation”. The campaign fully conforms to human rights principles established by the UN, it said in a statement, adding that it “strongly rejected his mostly baseless assertions”.
Despite laws to end the practice of manual scavenging, a euphemism for clearing faeces from dry toilets and open drains by hand, it is prevalent in many Indian states. The occupation has long been thrust upon the Dalit community, the lowest ranked in India’s caste system. At least 90 percent of the country’s estimated one million manual scavengers are women, who clean public and private dry latrines with barely any safety equipment.
While caste-based discrimination was banned in 1955, Dalit communities continue to face threats of violence if they try to give up manual scavenging. Dozens of manual scavengers have died in recent years from toxic fumes in septic tanks, activists say. The Indian government has shown “unprecedented commitment” in tackling the gaps in sanitation, but it also needs to adopt a humanitarian focus in addressing the issues, said Heller, who will submit a full report of his findings in September 2018.
Smog shortening lives Meanwhile, in the emergency ward of a Delhi hospital, men and women gasp for breath as they wait to be treated for symptoms triggered by the choking blanket of smog that descended on the Indian capital this week. Doctors at the government-run Vallabhbhai Patel Chest Institute say patient numbers have more than tripled since pollution levels spiked amid a change in weather conditions and the annual post-harvest burning of crop stubble in surrounding areas.
Shopkeeper Manoj Khati said he initially dismissed his heaving cough but it grew gradually worse and he has now been diagnosed with chronic bronchitis. “For three days I haven’t stopped coughing, I felt as though I would die,” the 46-year-old said as he waited to undergo further tests. Levels of PM2.5 - the fine pollution particles linked to higher rates of chronic bronchitis, lung cancer and heart disease-regularly topped 500 this week, at one point going over 1,000.
Levels between 301 and 500 are classified as “hazardous”, while anything over 500 is beyond the official index. The World Health Organization’s guidelines say 25 is the maximum level of PM2.5 anyone can safely be exposed to over a 24-hour period. Emergency ward doctor Mansi Verma said the hospital had seen a huge spike in patients suffering from respiratory problems. They are treated with steam inhalation or using nebuliser machines, which provide immediate relief by administering drugs directly to the airways. “Beginning this week, we are seeing between 250-300 patients, more than three times the usual,” Verma said. “Most of them suffer from intense coughing and inflammation of the respiratory tract.”
Slow killer
Despite the rise in emergency cases Arvind Kumar, a respiratory diseases specialist at the private Sir Ganga Ram Hospital in Delhi, said many of the worst health effects would not be seen for years to come. “Pollution kills you slowly,” he said. “Whatever toxins levels we are exposed to today, suppose it continued for 10 days, this would have shortened the life of each one of us by several days or several weeks. “But that effect will be noticed many, many years later, so it’s not an immediate killer. And that’s why its potential lethal value is not immediately appreciated, but nonetheless, it’s a lethal killer.”
Indian lower-caste communities left to clean toilets