Public toilet brings shame on slum
Communal convenience in Pulakeshi in dreadful condition
for past 20 year
 |
A lady waiting outside the community toilet in the slum |
By Tashi Namgyal
BANGALORE (Nov. 30)—Despite being born and brought up in one of Bangalore’s most overcrowded slums, Janaki Subramanian has a cheerful disposition. She wore a smile when she showed a SoftCopy reporter around Pulakeshi shanty town—except when she started talking about its communal toilet.
The foul-smelling, filthy latrine in the slum in Frazer Town has been a cause of shame and inconvenience to the 21-year-old Christian missionary all her life. It is right next to a main road, which passersby cross rather than walk past the toilet.
“When I was studying in the public school near our slum, I was humiliated many times by my classmates when they came to know that I was living in this slum and using that dirty toilet,” Subramanian said with a sigh.
600 million Indians lack access to toilet
According to a study by Prof. Abir Mullick of the National Institute of Design, 55 percent of all Indians, or close to 600 million people, still do not have access to any kind of toilet.
Among those who are most affected are people who live in urban slums and rural areas. Fifty-four percent of urban slum dwellers do not have access to toilets, and 74 percent of the rural population is forced to defecate outdoors.
According to a report by the World Bank published in December 2010, the lack of toilets and poor hygiene practices in India costs Asia's third-largest economy almost $54 billion every year in costs related to premature deaths, treatment of sick people, wasted time and productivity, and lost tourism revenues.
Bangalore, India’s fifth-largest metro city, boasts the nickname of the “Garden City” and is known as the country’s IT capital. Lonely Planet ranked the city third in its list of the top 10 travel destinations for 2012. But Bangalore is no better than the rest of India when it comes to public convenience and hygiene amenities.
Slum dwellers forced to defecate outside
Though it measures barely the size of a basketball court, Pulakeshi slum is home to some 250 families, with a population of over 700 people, including Subramanian, her elder sister and mother.
The slum is almost 40 years old, and people there lived in huts for many years before they built their homes with mud.
Subramanian’s mother, whose face is lined with wrinkles, says the communal toilet was built about 20 years ago. It has not been maintained since and is now in a horrifying state, with no proper water supply.
The sight of sun-baked human stools on the ground outside the toilet and outside the toilet bowls inside the small building show what an affront to the human dignity of its users the toilet is. When conditions inside the toilet are beyond endurance, slum dwellers defecate outside it. The toilet has no doors, which discourages the slum dwellers from using it except before dawn and after dusk.
|
| The sorry state that the community toilet is in |
Politicians promise relief but don’t deliver
Subramanian says every time a local election is scheduled, politicians flock to the slums trumpeting promises to improve or rebuilt their public toilets if people will only vote for them. But those promises are never kept, she says.
“The public toilet cleaner appointed by the government appeared once and then vanished for days,” Subramanian said. “Whenever the toilet is choked, we have to go and manually fix it by ourselves, otherwise the entire slum will be full of the nasty smell.”
Subramanian’s sister, Malika, is considered to be the most educated person in the slum. Whenever a stranger visits the slum seeking information, a slum dweller will guide them to her.
Malika is a college dropout but continues her education through distant learning. She worked for business process outsourcing companies before becoming a Christianity missionary like her sister.
She, too, recalled the humiliation she felt when her workmates learned she was living in a slum with a horrible public toilet.
Janaki said that while the Pulakeshi slum dwellers have lost hope in the local government, their attitude toward the media is no more positive.
“Many people of your type have visited the slums, asked for a lot of information, took photographs and videos, but the slum dwellers have not benefited in any way so far,” Janaki said.
She and Malika pray that someday they will have the financial wherewithal to allow them to leave the slum and its awful toilet, but they have no idea how such a miracle could come to pass.
|
