Want to be elected in India? Better have a toilet!

[Sea Skimmer]

No toilet, no seat, says minister
By Ayanjit Sen
BBC News, Delhi

Village council candidates in India should be allowed to stand for election only if they have a toilet at home, the rural development minister says.

In a letter to all chief ministers, Raghuvansh Prasad Singh said the toilet rule should be set out in law.

He said too many elected members "do not have toilet facilities in their own houses and defecate in the open".

Mr Singh said this activity was the main cause of the high incidence of diarrhoea in rural areas.

'Change behaviour'

Mr Singh told the BBC that more than 65% of India's rural population defecated in the open, along roadsides, railway tracks and fields, generating huge amounts of excrement every day.

"This finds its way into the water sources," Mr Singh said.

About 70% of India's billion-plus population live in its more than 550,000 rural villages.

"It is unfortunate that a large number of elected village council members and rural government officers do not have toilet facilities in their own houses and defecate in the open," Mr Singh's letter said.

The minister said they needed to change their behaviour and adopt better sanitation and hygiene practices.

"It is essential to obtain their commitment to the sanitation agenda in view of the influence they exercise in the rural areas," the letter said.

Some states have already made amendments in the Panchayati Raj Act, which deals with the election of village councils, to ensure that elected members have toilet facilities in their households.

The rural development minister suggested all chief ministers make similar provisions.

"Only then can we eradicate the practice of open defecation by 2010," he says.

The central government has already launched a Total Sanitation Campaign in which awareness is being created regarding the ill-effects of open defecation.

"Sanitation promotion requires social mobilisation on a large scale and cannot be achieved by a few individuals but by collective involvement of all sections of society," the letter says.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/s ... 742929.stm

Published: 2005/08/03 15:54:43 GMT

© BBC MMVII

Seems like they might actually have a point on this, leadership is supposed to set an example after all. That never works on a national level, but local government tends to have has much more influence on day to day lives.

[Sidewinder]

About 70% of India's billion-plus population live in its more than 550,000 rural villages.

"It is unfortunate that a large number of elected village council members and rural government officers do not have toilet facilities in their own houses and defecate in the open," Mr Singh's letter said.

The minister said they needed to change their behaviour and adopt better sanitation and hygiene practices.

The rural development minister suggested all chief ministers make similar provisions.

"Only then can we eradicate the practice of open defecation by 2010," he says.

I shudder to think how many millions/billions it would cost to provide toilets, public or private, to every Indian citizen. Good luck, Mr. Singh-- I think you'll need a lot of that.

[Drooling Iguana]

I shudder to think how many millions/billions it would cost to provide toilets, public or private, to every Indian citizen. Good luck, Mr. Singh-- I think you'll need a lot of that.

A toilet bowl and tank sold on the Home Depot website costs about $140. India has a population of roughly 1 billion. Therefore, in order to buy a toilet at American retail prices for every man, woman and child in India you'd have to spend an amount significantly less than the average amount the United States has spent on military and reconstruction costs in Iraq each year between October 2001 and August 2005 according to this article that I dug up on a Google search.

[Lancer]

I shudder to think how many millions/billions it would cost to provide toilets, public or private, to every Indian citizen. Good luck, Mr. Singh-- I think you'll need a lot of that.

A toilet bowl and tank sold on the Home Depot website costs about $140. India has a population of roughly 1 billion. Therefore, in order to buy a toilet at American retail prices for every man, woman and child in India you'd have to spend an amount significantly less than the average amount the United States has spent on military and reconstruction costs in Iraq each year between October 2001 and August 2005 according to this article that I dug up on a Google search.

Without water mains and sewage pipes, those toilets are going to magically fill themselves from the river, right?

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

I sense there will be a few riots in the villages and then the law gets overturned.

[K. A. Pital]

Without water mains and sewage pipes, those toilets are going to magically fill themselves from the river, right?

Centralized water plants for cities costs are also known, and in the villages usually you install a toilet with a manure pit.

[Raw Shark]

Call me a hopeless outdoor-shitting idealist, but aren't the elected officials at least in theory supposed to set the example that the voters want them to set? If there was serious popular support for an outdoor-shitting platform for its own sake (I know, I know) and they can't even put a candidate who practices their (currently legal) custom on the ballot because a minority is convinced that it harms the group, that seems to me like a serious blow to the expression of their views with some slippery slope potential in a country with so many fundies.

[Lancer]

Without water mains and sewage pipes, those toilets are going to magically fill themselves from the river, right?

Centralized water plants for cities costs are also known, and in the villages usually you install a toilet with a manure pit.

I was responding to DI's comment about a toilet bowl and tank from Home Depot, not the original article. To install that kind of toilet in a remote village would require much more work than it would to build the manure pit you mentioned.

[Drooling Iguana]

Without water mains and sewage pipes, those toilets are going to magically fill themselves from the river, right?

Centralized water plants for cities costs are also known, and in the villages usually you install a toilet with a manure pit.

I was responding to DI's comment about a toilet bowl and tank from Home Depot, not the original article. To install that kind of toilet in a remote village would require much more work than it would to build the manure pit you mentioned.

I used the Home Depot toilet as an extreme example, since obviously you'd only need a toilet for each family rather than one for each person and it would almost certainly be cheaper to produce them in bulk than to buy them retail. I just wanted an upper limit to show how these insurmountable costs that impede India from doing something that would do a great deal of good for a lot of people compares to the amount of money the US has been pissing away for the past four years.

[Nathaniel]

Without water mains and sewage pipes, those toilets are going to magically fill themselves from the river, right?

Centralized water plants for cities costs are also known, and in the villages usually you install a toilet with a manure pit.

Yeah, there was a guy on the World Service last night who had already sold a million of these manure pit toilets in India. They cost about a thousand dollars and gave excellent fertilizer and cooking fuel afterwards. It might cost as little as a hundred billion dollars to equip India's poor with toilets, assuming that the rural poor have large families.

[Sidewinder]

Without water mains and sewage pipes, those toilets are going to magically fill themselves from the river, right?

Centralized water plants for cities costs are also known, and in the villages usually you install a toilet with a manure pit.

Yeah, there was a guy on the World Service last night who had already sold a million of these manure pit toilets in India. They cost about a thousand dollars and gave excellent fertilizer and cooking fuel afterwards. It might cost as little as a hundred billion dollars to equip India's poor with toilets, assuming that the rural poor have large families.

How will India raise the money to equip the poor with manure pit toilets? By raising taxes? Cutting welfare and other social services? Cancelling procurement of the Vikramaditya and other high-dollar military equipment, at a moment when Pakistan is being Talibanized and Muslim terrorists are running rampant?

It's not as easy as you think.

[K. A. Pital]

How will India raise the money to equip the poor with manure pit toilets?

It can start investing a few billions into that yearly, and an improvement in the situation could give more incentives for the people to make better sanitary conditions with toilets and manure pits. The Kerala state already has first world living conditions despite a p/capita GDP not much higher than Indian average, and best sanitation in the country. Being a relatively "poor" country does not mean you cannot run social programs effectively, that is bullshit. The government wields massive funds and it must direct them towards the most urgent problems of society - disease and poverty. Open defecating is impacting the spread of disease, so ending that is very important.

[Grasscutter]

Without water mains and sewage pipes, those toilets are going to magically fill themselves from the river, right?

Centralized water plants for cities costs are also known, and in the villages usually you install a toilet with a manure pit.

Yeah, there was a guy on the World Service last night who had already sold a million of these manure pit toilets in India. They cost about a thousand dollars and gave excellent fertilizer and cooking fuel afterwards. It might cost as little as a hundred billion dollars to equip India's poor with toilets, assuming that the rural poor have large families.

Does anybody know why people in these villages don't build outhouses or at least dig a hole in the ground? I'm assuming there isn't a population density or space issue since these are rural villages.

[Sarevok]

[
Does anybody know why people in these villages don't build outhouses or at least dig a hole in the ground? I'm assuming there isn't a population density or space issue since these are rural villages.

I believe they do just that. Unless village in question is backward even by bumfuck, assam, india standards.

[wolveraptor]

I have no problem with introducing the use of toilets, but why make that a precondition of electability? It's not like India needs any help keeping the poor out of the system.

[Big Orange]

India not having many toilets has little to due to the country being especially poor, but Indian society intentionally keeping tens of millions of people literally living in mountains of shit.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

India not having many toilets has little to due to the country being especially poor, but Indian society intentionally keeping tens of millions of people literally living in mountains of shit.

Sadly, the caste system is quite well entrenched. Even many of the Indians I have met out of the country are of the Brahmin caste. I doubt that is mere coincidence.