822 IN96 SULABH PUBLIC TOILETS & BATH COMPLEXES A community toilet complex at Old Delhi Railway Station SULABH INTERNATIONAL SOCIAL SERVICE ORGANISATION SULABH PUBLIC TOILETS, BATH • & :;:::' HEALTH CENTRES IN INDIA The Bombay toilets, bath and health centre, funded by Indian Tobacco Company TOTAL. BUILT-UP AREA '. 10 50 - 0 0 SOFT 5ULABH SHAUCHALAYA GDMFLEX AT H A JIALi: CIRCLE, MUMBA1 CITY. FACtLCPeS IN COMPLEX TOr. FOR we URINAL ,S.P TOtLET GENTS 7 to 1 SULABH NTERNAT10N4AL LAOf£S 5 - 'I MAHARASHTRA BRANCH TOTAI t'2 3 MUM3AI 400 0?! INDIA ::; ...'• Sulabh public toilets, bath & health centres in India "The day everyone of us gets a toilet to use, / shall know that Our country has reached the pinnacle of progress." • Jawaharlal Nehru A community toilet complex at Patna, Bihar, India V')("Ihe year 1974 was a landmark in the Narayan Singh, IAS (Retd.):'the then history of public sanitation in India when, Administrator of Patna Municipal Corporation. Ji for the first lime, public health and This was previously the dirtiest place in the hygiene assumed national importance after ••town'because a large number of people used Sulabh International Social Service it as an open lavatory. At present, there is a Organisation set up public toilets, bath and 48-seat public lavatory at this place, maintained urinals in Patna, Bihar, India. Since then, the by Sulabh International' Social Service organisation has been constructing and Organisation, the head office of which is also maintaining public latrines, bath and urinals located on the same campus because the on behalf of local bodies throughout India surrounding is kept clean. "We have seen and in the neighbouring countries. toilets in offices and not offices amidst toilets," said New York Times while reporting Sulabh A 24-seat public latrine was first constructed activities in India. in Patna near the Reserve Bank, south of Gandhi Maidan, at the initiative of the Reserve Sulabh has entirely made a new approach to Bank officials and the then Chief Secretary the public sanitation problem not. only by of Bihar, Mr. Sharan Singh, IAS and Mr. Rajdeo setting up a large number of public toilets vSulabh toilets and bath complex funded by the House of Tatas, tlie largest industrialist group of India. and bath facilities but also by initiating end of Mohenjo-Daro civilisation and the end attitudinal change to this basic problem. By of 19th century, the sanitation remained as campaigning, education and demonstration, grim as ever. It was only in 1896, when the Sulabh has been able to turn the sanitation then Government of Bengal, in Calcutta the movement into an economic necessity relating capital of British India, passed the Bengal it to health and hygiene and economic Sanitation Act to set up public toilets and productivity, population control and good 'bath....... .,;.••..../,....• .. .V., .;...., living. But this legislative measure could not go very The public toilet system in India has an ancient far in promoting public sanitation and hygiene beginning. The history of bath and bathing is because the system was unsustainable and at least 5000 years old. At Mohenjo-Daro in the civic bodies did not have the money to the Indus River Valley, archaeologists spend on their maintenance and repair. The uncovered a public bath nearly 1000 sq ft (93 untold stories of the miseries of the people sq.m) in area, dating 2500 BC. Even .the private of Bengal and those living in other cities are houses there had their own bathrooms, fitted the unreported tragedies of that time. Men, with terracotta pipes encased in brickwork. women and children had to wait for hours on Efficient taps controlled the water flow. end to avail of the toilet service which was However, between the period marking the filthy, Unhygenic and unusable. The Public Commissioner of Calcutta prosecuted .140,000 persons in one year for "committing nuisance" in public places. But. this did not touch even the fringe of the problem. The answer to the problem lay in providing adequate facilities for defecation. When the long wait, could also not meet the situation, .•people in slums started using open spaces for defecation, .•resulting in a variety of Police hunt for "nuisance" makers diseases, land degradation, compounded the miseries of public toilets users. The sanitation movement, in India did not gain momentum also because household and public toilets were not a part of the Indian culture and tradition. Despite efforts, only 44% of the houses in cities in India have toilet facilities and in villages the percentage is negligible. The public toilet and bath concept is essentially urban where congested living, This is how the public toilets used to be before Sulabh shrinking space and inadequate moved in to improve the situation. sewerage facilities have fouling up of the environment and much else destroyed the hope of a good city life. beside. The population Of urban slums is composed Yet another pathetic story is narrated when mostly of rural migrants. Since migrants come Mr. L.P. Singh was the Chief Secretary of Bihar almost entirely from villages, they don't go and Mr. M.K. Sinha, its Police Chief; both of to public toilets even if they are available. them had decided to.ban open defecation in The larger a town, the larger is the proportion the Golf Club area of the State Capital. Police of migrants from rural areas. Smaller towns, were posted to stop the practice. One day while because of limited employment opportunities, the two topmost bureaucrats were taking a do not attract many migrants from rural areas. morning walk in the area, a man, under the Researchers emphasise that the important pressure of nature's call, came rushing in and reason for the rural migrants to settle, in the moment he squatted to defecate, lathi squatter and slum settlements is also due to blows fell on him. The Chief Secretary and the caste and kinship considerations. The physical Police Chief, who were witnesses to this tragic environment, in which users of public toilets "situation, decided to allow open defecation and live, reflects their socio-economic status and withdraw the police. cultural habits. Hence, sanitation in India is also a cultural problem. The civic authorities, in a hurry to meet the rising demand of sanitation facilities, set up The Sulabh sanitation endeavour, beginning strings of toilets in city centres but again from Patna, has •now covered almost the entire they could not maintain them for want of funds country and going even beyond that completely and, possibly, willingness. No wonder, our changing the sanitation scenario in the .country. cities and streets were stinking With litter When the Sulabh experiment was first thrown all around and garbage dumps bulging launched in Patna, the civic authorities said with unimaginable filth and waste. The public that attitude of people must change •first before toilets in India were a veritable hell on earth launching the pay-ancl-use toilet system. The which only a few: were condemned to use fear was quite legitimate, because people in and the remaining people used open land. India were ready to pay for anything but basic ••The worst sufferers were the women who had services like bath and toilets, hence, public to wait for the sun to set before they could lavatories continued to be unusable. But Dr. go out of their houses for easing themselves. Bindeshwar Pathak, Founder of Sulabh Movement did not agree to this proposal and Lack of water supply in public toilets, missing said that once clean and hygienic toilet services doors, ugly look of -over-flowing drains wen; provided to the people, they would not hesitate to pay for it and it proved to be true. Calcutta, Madras and Bombay, how to maintain The people having found clean public toilets the public toilets-cum-baths complexes on the started paying for it and more such pay-and- "pay^and-use" basis, round the clock without use toilets were set up in Calcutta, later in putting burden on public exchequer for their •Orissa, besides Patna, and finally all over the maintenance. Sulabh has converted these country. toilets into centres of social service, providing telephones, medicare and help in sanitation The most remarkable factor about the Sulabh and family welfare. ITiese services are specially International Social Service Organisation is useful in slum areas. It is a good example of that it does not take any grant, assistance, or people's participation in community subsidy from any agency, national or management; for, they are paying for the use international, in any form. It raises its own and continued upkeep of toilets-cum-bath resources by taking 20% implementation charge facilities without putting any burden on civic on projects and the money thus collected is spent on running the Sulabh organisation, now manned by 35,000 volunteers spread over 19 The concept of maintaining public toilets-cum- States and one Union Territory, covering bath centres on the pay-ancl-use basis has almost the entire population of the country. become very successful in the Indian cross- By making Sulabh a self-sustaining social cultural settings, covering length and width service organisation. Dr. Pathak has linked of the country. Before Sulabh started this good living with social service. He has proved system in 1974, public conveniences were like that a social worker can live a normal life hell on the earth. For this reason, everybody while serving the people and promoting the objected to the proposal of public toilet cause which is a unique experiment by this complexes being set up anymore. The local largest non-govemmnent organisation (NGO). bodies were unable to find a suitable solution These facilities are more popular at congested and had practically abandoned the idea of places like railway stations, bus stops and putting up more public toilets.