Immaculate India

Re: “Modi’s toilet claim raises questions”, (BP, Oct 3).

I was gratified to read about Indian PM Narendra Modi’s claim that all 1.3 billion Indians now have access to toilets and that he was about to declare India “open-defecation free”. But I was puzzled to read that 10,000 jars of treated human faecal matter (you could call it HFM) were to be distributed to guests at Mahatma Gandhi’s iconic Sabarmati Ashram.

I wondered what the guests were expected to do with them. It seems to me that the solution to India’s open-air toilet problem is not to preserve the substance of concern in jars (and possibly to market it?), but to get rid of it.

If my memory is correct, Gandhi himself once recommended that every Indian should carry a trowel, so that whenever he felt the urge, he could dig a little hole and bury his personal contribution to the topography of the planet. It seems that this idea never took hold.

Many years ago, an Indian philanthropist constructed a number of privies graced with the proud title “shauchalaya”, a Sanskrit term meaning “abode of cleanliness”. I encountered one while backpacking in the North Indian hill country in 1981. I never found out what happened to the shauchalaya initiative, but it was a praiseworthy effort that I hope succeeded.

Instead of distributing prestigeconferring jars of HFM to deserving Indians, I would suggest that Mr Modi’s government focus on (a) building more shauchalayas and (b) promoting Gandhi’s trowel suggestion. Then the Indian tourism authority could change its slogan “Incredible India” to “Immaculate India”.

TOILET MAN