India – the “ew” Problem

It is encouraging to see a leading magazine like the Outlook carry India’s toilet problem as its cover story of the month. Also of interest is the war of words between Jairam Ramesh and NaMo over temple vs toilet priority though that is typical of an election year.

 

Yes it is one of our biggest problems with over 60% of the population doing the ‘ew’ job in the open.  Women particularly face the problem in a more acute manner. In the urban areas there are no open spaces anyway so where do they go? Even in the rural areas, they face physical risk in going to secluded spots from errant males as well as scorpions snakes etc. so really ‘ew’. Majority of the population lacks access to any kind of toilets. Among the rest only a minority has access to individual toilets. Now several NGOs are working in this area and building one toilet costs anywhere between Rs10,000 to Rs 40,000.

Then there is the champion of researching sanitation problems in India – Sunita Narain. (As an aside, she is in the news for her accident – no lady, you can not bike on the Indian roads. Environmentalism is ok but jaan hai to jahan hai.. Our roads are not meant for a cyclist and it is a life threatening ‘exercise’). But coming back to our point, she and her team at CSE have laid bare the problem of Indian water cum sanitation crisis. Basically there is no drainage system and all the excreta is simply carried in storm water drains and dumped into the rivers.   

So, you could spend thousands of crores cleaning up the rivers but you could not because about 1.25 billion have a great deal of output no doubt.  

What India needs is laying down a drainage system which takes all this excreta to outskirts of cities (not in the direction of rivers) and does some sort of treatment / biogas conversion etc. there. This damn thing should not flow into the rivers. Period.

Further, every house should be given a water and sanitation connection – and maybe encourage them to build toilets and fund half the sum. I’m not sure building one toilet at a time is quite the solution. This is a key infrastructure that needs a huge amount of investment. Does it have a champion? Yes, our Rural development Minister Jairam Ramesh feels strongly about the problem, has released campaigns to this effect and also been supporting the initiative. Government has undertaken some drive to build toilets and the new PM candidate seems to be talking about it too.

So, what is the problem, why can’t we get it done? To my mind it is not the lack of political will but public will which is a hindrance. Will people give votes to a government that would build a sanitation/ drainage network in cities and toilets for them investing thousands of crores over a couple of years – yes it would take about 5-8 years to undertake this exercise. Or would they barter their votes to the one minister who comes calling giving them free color TVs, cash, food subsidies etc.? The former exercise will take two terms to come to fruition and the latter is instant gratification. I have no doubt about the voter’s mind as to who he would chose.

  

Lack of public will, or understanding the importance of highly costly and time consuming process of infrastructure creation is at the heart of the problem why our infrastructure is lagging far behind and instead we spend so much on freebees to voters. Because the impoverished voters only understand the latter. I remember watching a News program last year where a very poor woman in a village was vehemently speaking against a road being built saying is this road going to give us ‘roti’. It would be very hard to explain to her how building infrastructure and setting up SEZs will give them jobs and that will give them rotis (and besides also boost the economy). 

So, anyhow for sanitation crisis to be dealt with or for that matter any infrastructure creation, a lot of public opinion mobilization is required. Like few women have said no loo no marriage to men, the Indian voter has to say no drains/loos, no votes. And perhaps media, NGOs and activists can perform a role in making this a center stage issue. Though talking about it non stop especially at primetime is a bit of “ewwww”.

Rahul Gandhi trashes a 'trashy' ordinance – Why the fuss?

Ok so to save Lalu’s seat the government hastily wanted to bring in an ordinance overturning Supreme Court’s very valid judgment that convicted MPs and MLAs should lose their seats. Put in plain words, convicted criminals have no place in the parliament – fair enough. The government wanted to repeal that and no doubt since the issue affects ALL parties they were happy to pass it. 

That is such Nonsense – I mean you ought to be ashamed if you even discuss an ordinance that criminals should be in the parliament. We are not a “Mobrule” – like whatever majority says is the rule. Morality still has its benchmarks.

(Pic Source)

So then, in walks our hero, Rahul Gandhi, barges into a press conference and calls the spade a spade and calls this nonsense ordinance a non sense. Yes we need people to do that otherwise we are not a democracy – open disagreement is a good thing – like totally.

I guess the media is always looking for stories and it pounces on the PM asking if he is about to resign. Dr. Singh points out we are a democracy and not an authoritarian structure; if someone has expressed his opinion strongly, he would discuss it with him. Right said Fred, I mean Sir PM. He is not even upset about it. But the media is not about to give up so easily. This morning it is reported that Sonia and the PM sat far away at the Rajghat and Rahul was nowhere to be seen. Like we care.. duh.

Anyhow, calling non sense non sense is a good thing and no big deal anyway. Now if he had called the PM some derogatory terms, it would have been a different matter but just having an open disagreement is what may I say it is “OK”. Political parties ought to be more open and transparent like this rather than closing in ranks and discussing everything behind closed doors. Why is the media surprised? It is time we learned what really is a democracy.

What the fuss is all about I’m not clear.

Enough said!

Anyhow on a more important matter, isn’t this ‘Swadesh” look totally suiting Rahul Gandhi? Now why is the press silent about this?