When going to the toilet can be scary
Nightly trek into fields leaves women feeling more vulnerable in wake of young girls' murder
The Straits Times, 2 Jun 2014
Nightly trek into fields leaves women feeling more vulnerable in wake of young girls' murder
The Straits Times, 2 Jun 2014
KATRA SHAHADATGANJ (Uttar Pradesh) - The nightly trek into the fields behind their homes under the cover of darkness leaves the women of Katra Shahadatganj in this northern Indian state feeling scared and vulnerable at the best of times.
But the abduction, gang-rape and lynching of two young girls as they went to relieve themselves last Tuesday have added a terrifying new dimension to this ordeal.
Madam Maharani Devi said younger women were often harassed by men, and never went into the wheat and peppermint fields alone.
"Ever since this incident, we are now even more scared," said Madam Devi, 40, whose three- room house, like most in the district, has no toilet. "Most women are reluctant even going with just one companion," the mother of five told AFP yesterday.
Villager Om Vati, 75, said: "Some younger women who used to go out to the farms to give food or water to the men in the afternoon have (now) even stopped."
The murder of the two girls, aged 12 and 14, has generated headlines in India and beyond in an echo of the uproar over the fatal gang-rape of a student on a bus in Delhi in December 2012.
The victims, who cannot be named for legal reasons, had gone to the fields at night because their families lacked a toilet and the village has no communal latrines.
UNICEF estimates that almost 594 million people - nearly 50 per cent of India's population - defecate in the open, with the situation particularly acute in impoverished rural areas such as the Badaun district of Uttar Pradesh.
One of the murdered girls' relatives told AFP she not only wanted the authorities to ensure the killers are brought to justice, but also to build communal facilities.
"I am not generally afraid of open fields, of forests, snakes or local wildlife, but I am nervous when I go out to relieve myself in the fields," she said.
Ms Carolyne Wheeler of the non-governmental organisation WaterAid, which has carried out research on the issue in Uttar Pradesh, said about a third of women have no other option but to relieve themselves after sunset - usually accompanied by a friend who keeps watch.
Ms Carolyne Wheeler of the non-governmental organisation WaterAid, which has carried out research on the issue in Uttar Pradesh, said about a third of women have no other option but to relieve themselves after sunset - usually accompanied by a friend who keeps watch.
"It is the time when a woman is most vulnerable, exposed and the idea that such number of women are taking this daily risk to relieve themselves is shocking to us," she said.
Ahead of his recent election victory, new Prime Minister Narendra Modi indicated his party's Hindu nationalist policy goals - such as the building of a controversial temple in Uttar Pradesh - would play second fiddle to sanitation. "Toilets first, temple later," the right-winger leader said in a speech late last year.
Katra Shahadatganj, like other villages in the district, has power only a few hours a day, while stagnant water and raw sewage flow through its potholed dirt lanes.
The lack of progress on the issues has fuelled a sense in some quarters that the wishes of urban voters carry more weight than those of their rural counterparts.
When a reporter asked Uttar Pradesh's socialist Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav about the incidence of rapes in the state, he responded: "You haven't been harmed, have you? No, right? Great. Thank you."
But he later termed the latest attack "unfortunate" and called for fast-track courts for speedy justice.
The father of one of two girls murdered demanded yesterday that those arrested over the attacks be hanged. Three men face preliminary murder and gang-rape charges while two policemen face accusations of being criminal accessories.
He also said he has refused compensation from the government of Uttar Pradesh state whom he blamed for failing to stop last Tuesday's attacks against his daughter and niece.
"The Yadav government had offered us 500,000 rupees (S$10,600)... We won't take it. It is the administration that could have saved my daughters and didn't," the father said.
AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
A tough problem to flush away
By Amrit Dhillon, In New Delhi, Published The Straits Times, 13 Jun 2014
By Amrit Dhillon, In New Delhi, Published The Straits Times, 13 Jun 2014
IT IS a cliche to say that India is full of contradictions. But the fact that it can send rockets into space, produce billionaires who run global leviathans and explode nuclear devices while failing to build toilets is perhaps the starkest of them all.
The gang rape of two teenage girls in Uttar Pradesh on May 28 highlighted the dangers for women of having no toilet in their homes. The girls went out into the fields at night where they were raped and killed.
A joint World Health Organisation and Unicef report published last month said 597 million Indians, or 55 per cent of households in India, defecate in the open.
There are at least five implications.
First, it is a disgrace, an affront to human dignity. Travel on early morning trains and you flinch from the sight out the window: rows of exposed bottoms of squatting males lining the tracks as the train passes villages.
Second, open defecation gives children gastro-intestinal ailments which prevent them from retaining the nutrients in their food, leading to malnutrition.
Third, it is a massive health issue for everyone. The failure to remove human excreta leaves it within range of further human contact, causing disease. Absorbed into the earth, it also contaminates water sources.
Fourth, according to Unicef, 28 million Indian children have no toilet facilities in school. Not surprisingly, girls, when they start menstruating, drop out.
Finally, for women it is a dreadful daily scourge. When they venture out in the dark, men from the village can taunt them, flash torchlights at them through the crops where they crouch in the fields, or ambush and sexually assault them.
Despite all these problems, India has more mobile phones than toilets. The reason is that no government has made toilet-building a priority. This forms part of a wider picture of terrible sanitation. India's cities and towns are filthy. It took nothing less than the bubonic plague in the city of Surat in 1994 to make the municipal authorities improve sanitation.
Building toilets would not be easy even if the political will existed. The Urban Development Ministry's statistics for 2011 show that half of India's cities have no piped water or sewers. Even if they do, only 13 per cent of piped sewage is treated.
The beautiful Dal Lake in Srinagar has the city's raw sewage pumped into it. The "sacred" River Ganges receives almost 3,000 million litres of sewage every day from five cities that line its banks, most of it untreated.
The government has been building toilets since 1986. Yet three decades later, only 30 per cent of Indians have toilets. Corruption is partly responsible. Government funds for toilets are siphoned off on a colossal scale.
In truth, though, it is a daunting challenge. The 1.2 billion population keeps outgrowing the pace of toilet building. How do you build toilets in villages where there are no septic tanks, piped water or sewage pipes?
And we are talking about vast regions. Uttar Pradesh, for example, is the size of France. If it were a country, it would be the seventh biggest in the world in terms of population.
Even if a government could miraculously build the vast sewage and piped water network that is required, water remains a key issue. As conservationists point out, there is simply not enough water to provide all Indians with a flush toilet.
They are right. It is pointless aping developed countries when it comes to toilets. The Indian toilet of the future, if it is to be built on a gargantuan scale, will perforce have to be different.
One man who has devoted his life to thinking about toilets is social reformer Bindeshwar Pathak. His organisation, Sulabh International, has devised a dry, compost toilet for Indian conditions. It requires 90 per cent less water than a conventional toilet and converts the human waste into compost. A million such toilets are currently in use.
Why the government has not developed this toilet on a mass scale is a mystery. But at least it has decided to partner with the Melinda and Bill Gates Foundation, which launched the Reinvent the Toilet Challenge in 2011 to encourage innovative designs for poor countries.
The foundation gives grants to selected teams whose brief is daunting. Invent a toilet able to operate without water, sewer or electrical connections that costs only a few cents a day to operate.
If Mr Bill Gates succeeds, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi might throw his weight behind the winning design. He has said he wants to build a toilet in every Indian home.
But Mr Modi will also have to overcome another problem. Research by non-government organisations and United Nations agencies has shown that some rural Indians prefer to answer nature's call in the fields.
They find it "disgusting", "suffocating" and "embarrassing" to do their business in an enclosed closet inside their home.
That is why sanitation volunteers often find a new toilet being used as a store room for kitchen utensils. Or why some families prefer to use the government grant they receive for a toilet to build a room instead.
Experts say it will take time to change the habit of centuries. The sooner, the better.
The writer, a former BBC journalist, is a freelance journalist based in New Delhi.
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