Rethink on sanitation needed

Or Swachh Bharat Abhiyan may sink

How does the Indian state make an unwilling citizen use the toilet that has been built for him? One year after the prime minister turned the humble broom into a supposedly potent weapon to rid the nation of muck, policy-makers, bureaucrats and philanthropic organizations are still scratching their heads to come up with an answer to the puzzle. But assessments by credible institutions, such as the National Sample Survey Organization, have revealed that a sizeable section of the rural population refuses to transform the ideas and the rituals associated with sanitation. But sanitation cannot be understood in isolation. The challenges confronting public hygiene are inextricably linked to prevailing cultural practices, the behavioural patterns of targeted communities and their ideas of the public and the private, India’s entrenched caste system and the division of labour that arises out of it.

The shift in community hygiene should be augmented by affordable technology that complements local sensibilities. The twin-pit toilet, which turns waste to fertiliser, should be incentivised as a substitute for the expensive and leaky septic tank. But for this to happen, the campaign must conceive of ways to address the puritypollution dichotomy. Only then would citizens be compelled to view public spaces as being organically linked to the private realm.