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> Unfortunately, in many places, it’s not > feasible to lay down sewer pipes or build > treatment facilities. [...] But giving > people access to to

by avar 10y ago

> Unfortunately, in many places, it’s not > feasible to lay down sewer pipes or build > treatment facilities. [...] But giving > people access to toilets isn’t enough. You > also have to persuade them to use the > toilets. I can't find it now, but there was a news video making the rounds a year or two ago that showed that this problem is much more fundamental than that. It showed a Indians in a tiny village who were falling ill because they were literally taking a shit in the same river that they were getting their drinking water from, just a few meters away. These people all knew each other, and even if they didn't have any toilets or basic infrastructure I would have thought that something as basic as "if you shit where you drink, you get cholera" would be common knowledge anywhere in the world by now. Of course it would have been nice for those people to have sewer pipes, toilets etc. But in that case the problem could have been solved with a few shovels, and a marked area indicating where you should be going to do your business, preferable in some open field far from the drinking water. For those people toilets would be nice, but unnecessary. They clearly all have a shared interest in not drinking each other's shit. If by some magic they aren't aware that mixing shit with water leads to bad consequences that seemed to be solvable by some one-time government presentation on the consequences of them keeping doing what they were doing. But somehow the problem persists, it's unbelievable.

politicalthrow 10y ago
Could it be an example of a tragedy of the commons? No one wants to drink water where someone shit but everyone would rather shit in the water than in a field somewhere far and away from the ability to clean oneself.
- CodeCube 10y ago
  this is it right here ... what better way to get that baby-fresh feeling than just popping a squat in the river, where the current takes away your inanimate offspring downstream, and cleans your nether regions. Humans are creatures of habit, and often, self interest (a clean arse) will win over benefits to others (see all politics ever, almost)
  - amorphid 10y ago
    Say village A is upstream from village B. A poops in the water. How far downstream does B need to be for the water to be drinkable? Or is there no safe distance? If there is a safe distance, in theory, you could teach the villages in A to drink upstream and poop downstream. By the time the water gets to B, it's clean enough to drink?! Then teach B to poop upstream and drink downstream... You probably don't want to put me in charge of public health :P
    - gramanat 10y ago
      Well, the so called public defecation usually happens in a) slums b) rural areas where they have not built toilets at home. In the rural areas, they just go out into the fields which offer some privacy. It is never in the "public" like a river etc.
6d6b73 10y ago
You're right - in this case technology is not the solution. Building a simple outhouse is not that complicated and people in other parts of the world have been doing this for millennia.
Tharkun 10y ago
I wonder how long it took for westerners to stop throwing their "night soil" out the window and start installing and using toilets. What always struck me as strange is that the Romans had and used public toilets, but afterwards Europe went back to shitting in a bucket and throwing it out the window. Puzzling.
- cmdrfred 10y ago
  It has been said the knowledge was lost in the dark ages.
- chiph 10y ago
  Around 1854. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1854_Broad_Street_cholera_outbreak https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1854_Broad_Street_cholera_outb... Which about ten years later resulted in the Victorians building over 100 miles of sewers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_sewerage_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_sewerage_system
  - CodeCube 10y ago
    that's only 163 years ago ... that is distressingly recent
    - ralfd 10y ago
      New York was even later. Paris though began to built sewers in the middle ages: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_sewers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_sewers
  - Pica_soO 10y ago
    You know something, Jon Snow! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLpzHHbFrHY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLpzHHbFrHY
- 6d6b73 10y ago
  Still, buckets and "out the window" are better than "everywhere"
staticassertion 10y ago
The first or second chapter of Diffusion of Innovation covers a case where a health organization official tried to convince people to boil their water. No one did it. The concept of "germs" was so foreign to them, and their beliefs about water were already so ingrained. It was a complete failure. It seems obvious to say "if you drink dirty water you will get sick" but you're assuming that people can make so many connections - what makes it dirty? What makes you sick? What is illness? In many places there is no connection between 'germs' and illness because germs are not a concrete concept to them.
- mjevans 10y ago
  That's a case for bending the truth. Find out how to explain it in their existing culture. Curses, uncleanness, etc. There's probably SOMETHING responsible for misfortune, death, and disease. Claim that there is a method which helps battle this, it involves purifying the water with a strong fire for this duration of an hour-glass. Once it is cooled it is, for a short time, safe to use.
  - staticassertion 10y ago
    This wouldn't work in the case I mentioned because they actually already had a very strict definition of when water should be hot and cold. If this were vague or unclear in their culture, you could lie and say "Oh yeah, because you believe X and Y, Z is true" - ignoring the ethical questions this brings up. But in their case water being boiled was something you did when you were sick. This already had them boiling water for sick people, the sick would get better (to some extent confirming their belief), and they'd go back to cold dirty water.
  - Kluny 10y ago
    This opens the door for unintended side effects and cargo-cult behaviour. Not recommended.
  - azernik 10y ago
    One interesting attempt at this was a health intervention in Cambodia. Rural villagers were having iron deficiencies. A cheap countermeasure was to put lumps of iron into boiling broths or water that people were going to drink, but it was hard to convince locals to actually follow through. So, they made iron lumps in the shape of fish (a local good-luck symbol) and handed them out - increased compliance a lot. http://www.bbc.com/news/health-32749629 http://www.bbc.com/news/health-32749629
Cyph0n 10y ago
Agreed, this is quite baffling. The only answer I can think of is that India hasn't been prioritizing education in rural communities. Population is not a valid excuse: do people still shit where they drink in China? I'm more understanding when it comes to the lack of basic sanitation facilities, but lack of education is inexcusable in this day and age!
- clock_tower 10y ago
  China used night soil as fertilizer historically; they don't anymore (when was the practice abandoned, I wonder? And is there any Chinese interest in terra preta?), but it got them into great habits. The same is true for at least Korea and Japan; I don't know as much about Southeast Asia. Only drinking hot drinks also helped China's health. Fernand Braudel, in The Structures of Everyday Life, discusses this in passing; even 17th-century observers felt that it would be better for the Spanish colonials to adopt Chinese practice in the Philippines rather than keeping their custom of drinking everything iced. (Where did they get the ice?) Braudel also mentions a case where St. Francis Xavier drank a cup of cold water, to the horror of his Chinese entourage, who warned him not to keep up such a dangerous practice...
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - rsync 10y ago
    "(Where did they get the ice?)" That is a fantastic question ... Many different cities around the world have an "icehouse" street - the origin of the name being obvious. However, I know of an "icehouse" street in Hong Kong and I always wonder "when the icehouse was here, and this street was named for it, where in the world were they getting ice?" I know you can pack ice in sawdust and straw, etc., and keep it for the summer, but Hong Kong is a very, very long journey from anywhere that freezes in the winter ... where were they bringing ice from ?
    - sorenjan 10y ago
      They got the ice from the east coast of the US and from Norway. Ice used to be big business. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_trade https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_trade
newsat13 10y ago
> It showed a Indians in a tiny village who were falling ill because they were literally taking a shit in the same river that they were getting their drinking water from, just a few meters away. Many things that are obvious to now are not obvious unless we are rightly educated. You might like to read http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2015/01/12/375663920/the-doctor-who-championed-hand-washing-and-saved-women-s-lives http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2015/01/12/37566392... which believe it or not is not even 150 years old.
- trollsonson 10y ago
  What's really amazing is that nearly all of them had 20+ years of .net experience!
- ralfd 10y ago
  Sure, but non-obvious things often manifest in culture nonetheless. For example the romans with their mighty aqueducts, cleanliness rules in religion, drinking tea (needs boiled water) or beer/wine (alcohol desinfects), or being obsessed that evil witches dont poison your wells etc.
  - mschuster91 10y ago
    > drinking tea beer/wine (alcohol desinfects) Also, beer provides large amounts of calories, so it also feeds the consumer with low risk of the "food" getting stale. There's a reason why in Bavaria a fat belly is called a "Bierbauch" ;)
    - Declanomous 10y ago
      A fat belly is literally called a beer gut or a beer belly in English as well.
bingomad123 10y ago
> It showed a Indians in a tiny village who were falling ill because they were literally taking a shit in the same river that they were getting their drinking water from, just a few meters away. Take the western media's portrayal of India's poverty with a little grain of salt. India is very poor and I lived in a village where people use to shit in open but then there is something like "poverty porn" that western media often engages in to get more eyeballs. In rural areas open shitting has its own unwritten rules. You shit far from water sources, temples and other places where people gather. You shit away from water wells. Sick people shit in a separate area. People do shit at riverside because easy availability of water but it is essentially tragedy of commons issue and it was very common to beatup people who took a dump near potable water sources.
- throwaway12837 10y ago
  It's not just India. They do it for countries ranging from Russia to China to Japan/Korea. The spin - not surprisingly - often matches whatever the current US geopolitical stance is at that point.
lostlogin 10y ago
There are other aspects to the problem that make it more complicated. A lack of decent bathrooms has been correlated with a risk of sexual violence in India - perhaps these people are going somewhere they feel safe? There are millions of links on this problem, here is one. https://www.google.co.nz/amp/s/tribune.com.pk/story/1265016/poor-toilet-access-contributes-india-rape-rise/%3Famp%3D1 https://www.google.co.nz/amp/s/tribune.com.pk/story/1265016/...
graycat 10y ago
Don't need much in the way of sewer pipes. I live in the US, in NY, 70 miles north of Wall Street, in a house with two bathtubs, four sinks, three toilets, one washing machine, and one dish washer, with nearly no use of "sewer pipes". Right, no city sewer. Instead there is some PVC pipe, cheap, super simple to work with, darned rugged, and, presto, bingo, a big concrete box in the ground just behind the main piece of big, white PVC pipe. That box is the septic tank. It's been working great, with essentially zero maintenance, for 20+ years. So, all the water used in the house, from the toilets, sinks, etc. is collected via PVC pipe and fed into the septic tank. The water from the septic tank flows into a "drain field" in the back yard. Works great. With the septic tank, there was only one problem only once: I had an infection on the edge of the nail on my left big toe and daily applied triple antibiotic cream (eventually cleared up the infection). Soon I had water, etc. bubbling up near the back of the back yard. Why? The antibiotic cream was powerful stuff; some of it got on my socks; when I washed the socks in the washing machine, some of the cream got into the septic tank and basically killed off the crucial bacteria that was eating everything not just H2O (right, and creating CO2 and methane which bubbled out, rarely noticeable). Solution? Sure, the grocery store sells a box of little, dry granules. So, flush about half of the box down any one of the toilets. Then the bacteria in the septic tank are alive and working again; the spot in the backyard dried up again, and no more problems! Just need a septic tank, a little PVC pipe, and no sewer pipe or sewer treatment plant, etc. For water, nope, I get nothing from the city. Instead I have a well. Well, the septic tank is in the back yard and the well, in the front yard -- not sure that makes much difference since the well is deep enough, likely 100+ feet, not to use "surface water". So, how do I get "pure water"? Hmm. Running out of a faucet or standing in a glass, the water looks fine. Eventually discover that the water is saturated with calcium carbonate, that is, limestone, if you will, marble. Why? Down there, maybe 100 feet, where the water comes from, there are some old, dead sea shells, however many hundreds of millions of years old. Otherwise I have a filter in the line: The filter is a tube about one foot long and 3 inches in diameter and made from some kind of foam or a lot of string wrapped tightly. My hardware store sells these for not very much, and they have several varieties that filter out everything down to some number of microns, different number for different varieties. One filter lasts for over a year. No evidence of disease in or from the water. Yes, the calcium carbonate ruined the dishwasher, so I wash dishes in the sink and dry them a traditional dish drain rack. I have the rack on a plastic base designed for that purpose, tilted, and set in an aluminum tray to catch the runoff water. So, after some months I can notice that, while the dishes dry nicely and look just squeaky clean, from all the water that ran into the aluminum tray and evaporated, some mud was left behind. So, the water seems to have calcium carbonate plus some additional dissolved solids that, after enough water has evaporated, look like mud. Or for all I know, the "mud" is left over dish detergent? Naw, I suspect the mud is dissolved solids. Maybe if I used a finer filter I would get less mud, but I doubt it. But the mud is doing me no harm. The usual remark from the local plumbers is that the water is safe to drink, won't hurt you. On the calcium carbonate in the water, yes I could use a water softener. Actually, I have one. To use it, have to buy big bags, maybe 40 pounds each, of rock salt, that is NaCl. The softener takes the water and converts the calcium carbonate to calcium chloride which is more soluable (doesn't settle out on hot water pipes), doesn't create the scum with old style soap does with calcium carbonate, and feels soapy or slippery in the water. For the chloride in the calcium chloride, that comes from the salt, the NaCl. For the carbonate from the calcium carbonate, that goes out the drain as sodium carbonate. The water softener has a big barrel with ion exchange resins, little beads that, when flushed with water with a high concentration of NaCl, grab some of the Cl. Then when flushed with water with calcium carbonate grab the carbonate and replace it with the chloride, thus converting the incoming calcium carbonate to calcium chloride. But the big tank with the beads gave trouble; I paid to have the tank serviced, etc. And the automatic unit with that tank that flushed the beads with salt water, from the big barrel of salt from the big bags of salt, gave trouble. So, I pushed a big red button that had the water bypass the softener and unplugged the softener control unit from the wall A/C power. So much for the water softener. Also, it does appear that calcium chloride from the softener can corrode the solder used in the copper pipes -- bummer. For the calcium carbonate, it is a curious chemical since hot water dissolves less of it than cold water, the opposite of most solids. So, when the water is heated in the hot water coils of my furnace [here I'm talking about the coils for the domestic hot water and not the hot water for heating the house], the calcium carbonate settles out on the inside of the coils and after six months or so lowers the flow rate of the domestic hot water. So, I went shopping and got a length of copper water pipe, the tools to work with copper water pipe, some shutoff valves, some faucet valves, some connection fittings, some lengths of garden hose with fittings and intended as supply and drain hoses for a washing machine, a drill pump with connections for garden hoses, some plastic cups, a plastic bucket, a gallon bottle of muriatic acid, and a big, several pound size, bag of baking soda. So, I used the tools and the copper pipe to install the faucet and shutoff valves at appropriate places in the copper pipes leading to and from the domestic hot water coils of the furnace and attached garden hoses to the faucet valves. Then one of the garden hoses goes to one side of the drill pump, and a hose from the pump and another hose from the faucets go to the bucket. So, using the valves, I run some water into the bucket, nearly fill the bucket. Using an old 1/4" electric drill, I turn on the drill pump and get water flowing from the bucket, into the coils, and back to the bucket. I put one of the little copper pipe fittings, a right angle elbow, in the bucket. Then I pour about 4 ounces of the muriatic acid into one of the plastic cups, maybe the same cups apparently so popular at college frat parties or on Spring Break, and pour that acid into the bucket. Soon I get, sure CO2 bubbles in the bucket. Also, right, review high school chemistry, I get some calcium chloride in the bucket. Why? Secret: Muriatic acid is hydrochloric acid, that is, HCl, about 28%. In the residential construction industry, the acid is commonly used to remove, right, lime from concrete off bricks. It also nearly instantly removes lime from the inside of copper pipes. When the rate of the bubbles slows down, I add another 4 ounces of muriatic acid to the water and observe that the rate of bubbles does not increase again. Guess: All the calcium carbonate is out of the copper pipes. Then I add maybe one teaspoon of the baking soda to the water and observe that I get bubbles: Guess: There is still plenty of hydrochloric acid in the water. So, conclusion: The domestic hot water pipes in the furnace are clean. Then I turn off the drill pump, place the ends of the hoses that were in the bucket in a plastic tray intended for kitty litter, remove the little copper elbow from the bucket, carry the bucket to the back yard, and throw the water with the acid in a wide sweep onto the grass (I never see any effect on the grass). I look at the little copper elbow for evidence that my use of the hydrochloric acid is corroding the copper pipe -- so far I have seen no such evidence. Actually, inside the furnace, the coil for domestic hot water is lined with Teflon so that calcium carbonate will be less likely to stick; no doubt the Teflon would also protect that pipe from the acid. Back in the house with the bucket, I insert the hoses into the bucket again, use the valves to fill the bucket nearly full again, adjust the valves, turn on the drill pump, and get water flowing again from the bucket to the coils and back. Then I add to the water in the bucket baking soda, about 1/2 cup at a time, until there are no more bubbles. Then I add another 1/2 cup of baking soda to the water to be more sure. Then, doing the right things with the drill pump, valves, and hoses again, I dump the water in the bucket again, fill the bucket again, use the drill pump to circulate relatively fresh water, turn off the drill pump, set the valves back for ordinary use, and again dump out the water in the bucket. At the kitchen sink, I let the hot water run for a while to be more sure I've removed all the hydrochloric acid or baking soda from the water, and declare the project done -- lots of hot water flow rate now for months! Of course, I don't have a wife and six daughters in the house with each of them each day taking three baths, washing six changes of clothes, and washing their hair! But, still, I have no city water, no city sewer, no sewer pipe, and no big problems. Sure, when my startup is successful, I will look into getting, say, reverse osmosis to give me domestic hot/cold water that is much closer to pure, distilled water, that is, just good, old H2O and nothing else. But for India, in a place rural enough to permit the women to walk to the woods at night and use the woods as a toilet, septic tanks and wells should be a really big step up and solution to the problem. About India, I've long suspected that such really bad aspects of their living conditions have been so common, even standard, for so long that they have long since just accepted that living like that is okay with little or no desire or effort to do anything about it.
abandonliberty 10y ago
This is an area for innovation. Managing change/altering beliefs are extremely difficult. To help iron deficiency in Cambodians, they were encouraged to cook with iron ingots. No one used them. So they shaped the ingot into a lotus flower. Dice. Cultural investigation showed that fish were symbols of luck, health, and happiness. Fish-shaped ingots worked out! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucky_iron_fish https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucky_iron_fish
- mmanfrin 10y ago
  This is very fascinating; it's so interesting when something as simple as the shape of an iron ingot can have such huge effects.
- eru 10y ago
  The Wikipedia article you linked says that the lotus flower shape was rejected as well.
  - jellyd0ts 10y ago
    I don't know what he meant with "Dice.", but after that he did say that it was fish-shaped ingots that worked out. Does dice tend to mean success in this scenario?
    - Larrikin 10y ago
      The phrase is "No dice"
    - arfar 10y ago
      It could be a typo. "no dice" is an idiom in English for an "unfavorable result". https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/no_dice https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/no_dice
- 4684499 10y ago
  Why don't they just use iron pans? It's more affordable and more natural, you don't have to put something in your food, and it's being heated directly at the bottom. Did they just invent this iron fish to create more jobs?
up_and_up 10y ago
> But somehow the problem persists, it's unbelievable. Before you get too high and mighty there.... Not long ago (1996) here in the USA, they were still removing all the outhouses that had been positioned directly over fresh-water streams all over Appalachia. See "Straight Piping". [1] Its easy to judge poor people in other countries, we forget how recently we were (and maybe still are) making similar mistakes. [1] - https://www.arc.gov/magazine/articles.asp?ARTICLE_ID=94 https://www.arc.gov/magazine/articles.asp?ARTICLE_ID=94
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- ticviking 10y ago
  So how was the practice ended?
- mostlyskeptical 10y ago
  Even that link you posted says >Although most people with poor systems knew they had problems and wanted to correct them And also states that most of the problem is due to money (or lack of). In India even most of those in rural areas with toilets don't use them. [1] Further, even in urban areas of those those with access to toilets, 7.5% choose open defecation on the streets instead. Pretending that people that want indoor plumbing but can't afford it is the same situation as people with access to plumbing but don't use it is very disingenuous. [1]https://www.pri.org/stories/2016-05-12/india-access-toilets-remains-huge-problem-worst-all-women-and-girls https://www.pri.org/stories/2016-05-12/india-access-toilets-...
  - throwaway12837 10y ago
    Can you blame them though ? If you've been to one of these old roadside stops, you'll know how bad Indian toilets stink. I'm guessing the lack of piped water does not help.
  - escape_goat 10y ago
    Saying that people who have access to a public squat toilet in a rural area have "access to [indoor] plumbing but don't use it" might also be taken as disingenuous, but I suspect you were mainly not thinking carefully. No one fails to recognize the convenience of indoor plumbing. Running water right in your home is incredibly convenient. With a properly constructed drain system, it means you can also have a completely private place to defecate, indoors, a near-miracle of convenience. I do not think that this is a fair characterization of the proposal that is being rejected by some in India. It is possible that you have been inside a public squat toilet in a densely populated rural area, or for that matter even a poorly maintained public squat toilet in a busy urban shopping area. If so, it probably takes little effort to imagine yourself seriously considering defecation in a ditch, or an alleyway, as an alternative. If one had already been doing such all one's life, then there would be no obstacle of unfamiliarity, inexperience, or or public shame to discourage you. I do not see why one would not generally prefer to defecate in a familiar and comfortable manner, in the open air, rather than a small, dim room begrimed with the stench and trace faeces of thousands of previous acts of defecation, performed by strangers.
BurningFrog 10y ago
This sounds like part of the bigger problems of literacy and education. Solve those, and the toilet problem will disappear by itself.
balls187 10y ago
There are a non trivial number of people who believe the earth is flat. And these aren't Indians from a rural indian village.
- kahrkunne 10y ago
  A few thousand loonies on the Internet believing something weird but harmless doesn't weigh up to millions of Indians pooping on the street
thetruthseeker1 10y ago
Part of the problem is also because of lack of education. Unlike in the west, literacy rate is not as high, hence they miss out on the knowledge and awareness that can come from being able to read. But, India is making progress even on that front, so eventually I think both these improvements will complement one another nicely and things may be much different 10 years down the line. I am originally from India(now I live in US) and my grandfather who was a doctor in India back then in the 1950s would advise people who often fell ill to eat healthy and eat apple. People would ask him what Apple was and to describe it so that they can buy it in the market. My dad who also turned out to be a doctor said he didnt meet any patients who didnt know what Apple was...so yes, things change...but they take time.
- zuron7 10y ago
  I think this has to do more with the fact that Apples do not naturally grow in most of India. And I wouldn't doubt it if the whole An Apple a day was started by the US to help their agricultural exports. Westernisation of our palates has killed/reduced a lot of local foods. For example in the state of Karnataka, Wheat was unheard of a few decades ago, but now it's the primary consumed grain. Millets are making a comeback as wheat is unsustainable to grow in such an area. Responsible businesses are what we need.
  - logfromblammo 10y ago
    AFAIK, apples originated near the Caspian Sea. That's not a tremendously long hike from India. India is currently the #5 grower of apples worldwide at 2.2 Tg. The US is #2, with 4.1 Tg. China is #1 with 37 Tg. Apple cultivation in India is in the northernmost states Jammu & Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, and Arunachal Pradesh. "An apple a day keeps the doctor away" possibly originated in 1866, in Pembrokeshire, Wales, with the current phrasing stabilizing in the 1920s. Previous expressions extolling the health virtues of apples also exist, but cannot be verifiably linked to later expressions. We don't actually know whether that expression derives from a mention in Ayurvedic medicine that is 1500 years old. If you doubt, do research. Indians have been eating apples for centuries before Americans started growing them.
trprog 10y ago
You are thinking of the problem in a sciencey, evidence based way. In particular for illiterate, uneducated people there is often a huge weight given to superstition and traditional/existing ways of doing things even in the face of evidence. It is a surprisingly hard nut to crack, sometimes even among literate educated people. If it weren't a lot of religious extremism and bigotry would not exist.
parennoob 10y ago
I will bet that most of the comments in this thread are from people who have never lived in rural India. I have, and will tell you the real reason. It has little to do with literacy or education. It is because (warning, this is going ironic) Indian people are incredibly disgusted about shit and want to not think about dealing with it. I'm Indian myself. For example, we think toilet paper is a horrible idea. You just clean your shit with...paper...and just leave it like that? That would not fly, even in any of the villages you mention. They have to have water to clean their shit, usually supplied in a small bucket or vessel. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lota_(vessel) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lota_(vessel) Now think about temperatures. The current temperature at many places in India is more than a 100 degrees Fahrenheit. Your average restroom or shovel pit or whatever is going to smell incredibly bad and be full of flies and a horrible smell. That is why some people prefer the river, and don't use the toilets that are built for them (links elsewhere in this thread). Solutions? It's a usability problem. Bidets for poop washing that can be filled up instead of using piped water, super hydrophobic coatings, really large pits (so you don't smell the waste) –- things like that are going to be the solution. Unfortunately, no one approaches it in that way, and prefers to go the route of "Let's teach these uneducated savages not to shit where they eat." This is very unfortunate and I hope it will change in the future.
- throwaway12837 10y ago
  AFAIK no one poops in the river either (that would be one tricky feat); they poop on fields adjoining the banks and wash up afterwards. In places like Haridwar one gets screamed at for as little as putting the footwear in the stream. Then again there are sewer dumping into Ganga all over the place (though this was/is being challenged) - starting in fact from a few hundred meters down from Hari ki Paudi. I don't know. Since Indian literature (and with it the languages) have essentially become comatose, perhaps the country has lost all ability to make logical deductions [1], that'd be necessary for any level of consistency. [1] No, I know Sanskrit deals very much with logic and reasoning and grammar. I don't see so much as a vestige today, however. May be since it was/is practiced by a tiny minority that may not be all the surprising.
babyrainbow 10y ago
Ok. "Educated" people don't shit where they drink from. But they do much worse. Things like dumping toxic industrial waste that can make a whole region of people chronically ill to a river..Or drive machines that spew toxic gases literally to the face of fellow human beings.. I mean, is anyone really any better?
- perfmode 10y ago
  externalities are different, no?
  - babyrainbow 10y ago
    are they?
- a_imho 10y ago
  Out of sight, out of mind.
- Kluny 10y ago
  I honestly don't think education is the point here. _Dogs_ don't shit where they eat. Pet rats can be persuaded to poop in their cages and not on your couch. There's some kind of pressure happening here that the researchers failed to notice. Maybe leaving the village is unsafe - girls can't walk 50m downstream to a designated toilet because they'll be attacked and raped along the way. Maybe there are tigers. Maybe a tragedy of the commons has occurred where no one is maintaining the designated toilet so it turns into a disgusting pile of feces that reeks from kilmeters away. Why would anyone want to defecate there? The river probably feels cleaner, even if they know better.
  - alikoneko 10y ago
    My rats were litter trained actually. It took literally 1 day. During free-roaming time, I would just open the cage and put a ladder up to the bottom floor of the cage. They'd return home when they had to poop or pee. However, pet rats might not be a good example here. This might be anecdata, but my girls would eat, shit, and sleep in the litter box. I had to buy grated ferret litter boxes to keep one from getting sick. She got E.Coli from sleeping in the litter box, and it presented as a URI. Talking with other rat owners, this wasn't uncommon behavior either.
deleted 10y ago
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tomaskafka 10y ago
Check out how we, the 'wise modern civilization' splash all our chemicals and shit into the rivers and oceans, and then eat fish from there. I bet we will be looked at as 'these savage guys were totally dumb, look at them, it's unbelievable' about 50 - 150 years later. Also, you americans take away your babies from your mothers after few weeks, putting them to a cold hearted institutions, making them frustrated for life? In exchange for what, extra 1 % of GDP from working mothers? That's a pretty bad deal I must say. Most people in Europe would see this as a barbaric practice, as we know children need a close contact with parents till at least 2.5 years (don't you study developmental psychology there?), and our social systems support that. (wanted to show that we both are 'those dumb indians' from some more civilized point of view)
- shard972 10y ago
  I get your point but at least you get the 1% GDP gain, what upside is there to shitting in your drinking water? It's few steps closer?
  - keypress 10y ago
    A little bit of vitamin B12.
  - AnthonBerg 10y ago
    It's close, and the river washes everything away. You don't know about or understand the rest. How would you?, nobody thought to tell you. Life is difficult.
- vivekd 10y ago
  I don't think that really answers the parent's point. The connection between cholera and shitting where you drink is an obvious one. The connection between putting kids in daycare and polluting the ocean and whatever bad things come out of that are a few times removed and remote. It's a lot easier to see that drinking poo water will make you sick than it is to see that putting kids into daycare will "frustrate them for life."
throw_away_elec 10y ago
>> "Among other things, they contain the world's earliest known system of flush toilets." [1] >> "With a number of courtyard houses having both a washing platform and a dedicated toilet / waste disposal hole. The toilet holes would be flushed by emptying a jar of water, drawn from the house's central well, through a clay brick pipe and into a shared brick drain" [1] Amazing. This was about the Indus Valley Civilization in 3300–1300 BCE. It's interesting to note that how much a civilization, like Rome after the collapse as shown in the below thread, can lose much of cultural or technical advances it made earlier. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanitation_of_the_Indus_Valley_Civilisation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanitation_of_the_Indus_Valley...
keypress 10y ago
It's a little more complicated than digging a hole in the ground. You have to ensure you don't poison the water table with run off or monsoons. Protect them from pests. Aerobic composting is simple when liquids are removed (urine separator and no black water). Pumping air through toilet chambers can help remove smells. I live in the UK, and as I age, I seem to be loosing control of certain physical faculties. And we have a distinct lack of public toilets, which is ridiculous. You need toilets dotted everywhere which you are comfortable using. In very highly populated areas using water as a transport has been somewhat miraculous. But it's not always appropriate. Recycling waste locally is probably a good idea where you can. Night soil sounds primitive, but is pretty neat. Problems arise when raw sewage comes into contact with foods etc. Composting sewage, delays usage, but removes health risks and improves the resulting output. I actually resent flushing my own turds down the toilet when my garden really could do with the input. But when two thirds of my water bill is for waste, you think twice about constructing alternatives.
- JulianMorrison 10y ago
  The UK used to have public toilets. Then it had Conservatives. Councils can't fund facilities with money they no longer have. "But you can use the loo in Costa" says the Tory. Nope, not if you're homeless or poor or it's after closing time.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
bahularora 10y ago
There are many things that are unbelievable you would be surprised, POTUS and many educated Americans not believing in Climate change. believing that they are waging a war on terror, religious/racial discrimination existing in modern society.
keypusher 10y ago
The problem is that is a billion people, and they aren't the only ones who live next to that river. It's the people upstream who are also defecating into the river that are likely causing them to get sick. And digging a hole in the field for the village to go in can be a bad idea because that area becomes a breeding ground for all kinds of bad stuff. This isn't like when you went camping and pooped in the bushes one time. This is millions of people, every day, for decades. The waste builds up unless it's taken care of, and putting your waste into the river where it will be washed away starts to look like a viable strategy. Maybe these people aren't as dumb as you think, they just live in a very different environment and didn't have your education.

by avar 10y ago

politicalthrow 10y ago

Could it be an example of a tragedy of the commons? No one wants to drink water where someone shit but everyone would rather shit in the water than in a field somewhere far and away from the ability to clean oneself.

CodeCube 10y ago
this is it right here ... what better way to get that baby-fresh feeling than just popping a squat in the river, where the current takes away your inanimate offspring downstream, and cleans your nether regions. Humans are creatures of habit, and often, self interest (a clean arse) will win over benefits to others (see all politics ever, almost)
- amorphid 10y ago
  Say village A is upstream from village B. A poops in the water. How far downstream does B need to be for the water to be drinkable? Or is there no safe distance? If there is a safe distance, in theory, you could teach the villages in A to drink upstream and poop downstream. By the time the water gets to B, it's clean enough to drink?! Then teach B to poop upstream and drink downstream... You probably don't want to put me in charge of public health :P
  - gramanat 10y ago
    Well, the so called public defecation usually happens in a) slums b) rural areas where they have not built toilets at home. In the rural areas, they just go out into the fields which offer some privacy. It is never in the "public" like a river etc.

6d6b73 10y ago

You're right - in this case technology is not the solution. Building a simple outhouse is not that complicated and people in other parts of the world have been doing this for millennia.

Tharkun 10y ago

I wonder how long it took for westerners to stop throwing their "night soil" out the window and start installing and using toilets. What always struck me as strange is that the Romans had and used public toilets, but afterwards Europe went back to shitting in a bucket and throwing it out the window. Puzzling.

cmdrfred 10y ago
It has been said the knowledge was lost in the dark ages.
chiph 10y ago
Around 1854. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1854_Broad_Street_cholera_outbreak https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1854_Broad_Street_cholera_outb... Which about ten years later resulted in the Victorians building over 100 miles of sewers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_sewerage_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_sewerage_system
- CodeCube 10y ago
  that's only 163 years ago ... that is distressingly recent
  - ralfd 10y ago
    New York was even later. Paris though began to built sewers in the middle ages: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_sewers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paris_sewers
- Pica_soO 10y ago
  You know something, Jon Snow! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLpzHHbFrHY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLpzHHbFrHY
6d6b73 10y ago
Still, buckets and "out the window" are better than "everywhere"

staticassertion 10y ago

The first or second chapter of Diffusion of Innovation covers a case where a health organization official tried to convince people to boil their water. No one did it. The concept of "germs" was so foreign to them, and their beliefs about water were already so ingrained. It was a complete failure. It seems obvious to say "if you drink dirty water you will get sick" but you're assuming that people can make so many connections - what makes it dirty? What makes you sick? What is illness? In many places there is no connection between 'germs' and illness because germs are not a concrete concept to them.

mjevans 10y ago
That's a case for bending the truth. Find out how to explain it in their existing culture. Curses, uncleanness, etc. There's probably SOMETHING responsible for misfortune, death, and disease. Claim that there is a method which helps battle this, it involves purifying the water with a strong fire for this duration of an hour-glass. Once it is cooled it is, for a short time, safe to use.
- staticassertion 10y ago
  This wouldn't work in the case I mentioned because they actually already had a very strict definition of when water should be hot and cold. If this were vague or unclear in their culture, you could lie and say "Oh yeah, because you believe X and Y, Z is true" - ignoring the ethical questions this brings up. But in their case water being boiled was something you did when you were sick. This already had them boiling water for sick people, the sick would get better (to some extent confirming their belief), and they'd go back to cold dirty water.
- Kluny 10y ago
  This opens the door for unintended side effects and cargo-cult behaviour. Not recommended.
- azernik 10y ago
  One interesting attempt at this was a health intervention in Cambodia. Rural villagers were having iron deficiencies. A cheap countermeasure was to put lumps of iron into boiling broths or water that people were going to drink, but it was hard to convince locals to actually follow through. So, they made iron lumps in the shape of fish (a local good-luck symbol) and handed them out - increased compliance a lot. http://www.bbc.com/news/health-32749629 http://www.bbc.com/news/health-32749629

Cyph0n 10y ago

Agreed, this is quite baffling. The only answer I can think of is that India hasn't been prioritizing education in rural communities. Population is not a valid excuse: do people still shit where they drink in China? I'm more understanding when it comes to the lack of basic sanitation facilities, but lack of education is inexcusable in this day and age!

clock_tower 10y ago
China used night soil as fertilizer historically; they don't anymore (when was the practice abandoned, I wonder? And is there any Chinese interest in terra preta?), but it got them into great habits. The same is true for at least Korea and Japan; I don't know as much about Southeast Asia. Only drinking hot drinks also helped China's health. Fernand Braudel, in The Structures of Everyday Life, discusses this in passing; even 17th-century observers felt that it would be better for the Spanish colonials to adopt Chinese practice in the Philippines rather than keeping their custom of drinking everything iced. (Where did they get the ice?) Braudel also mentions a case where St. Francis Xavier drank a cup of cold water, to the horror of his Chinese entourage, who warned him not to keep up such a dangerous practice...
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- rsync 10y ago
  "(Where did they get the ice?)" That is a fantastic question ... Many different cities around the world have an "icehouse" street - the origin of the name being obvious. However, I know of an "icehouse" street in Hong Kong and I always wonder "when the icehouse was here, and this street was named for it, where in the world were they getting ice?" I know you can pack ice in sawdust and straw, etc., and keep it for the summer, but Hong Kong is a very, very long journey from anywhere that freezes in the winter ... where were they bringing ice from ?
  - sorenjan 10y ago
    They got the ice from the east coast of the US and from Norway. Ice used to be big business. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_trade https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_trade

newsat13 10y ago

> It showed a Indians in a tiny village who were falling ill because they were literally taking a shit in the same river that they were getting their drinking water from, just a few meters away. Many things that are obvious to now are not obvious unless we are rightly educated. You might like to read http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2015/01/12/375663920/the-doctor-who-championed-hand-washing-and-saved-women-s-lives http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2015/01/12/37566392... which believe it or not is not even 150 years old.

trollsonson 10y ago
What's really amazing is that nearly all of them had 20+ years of .net experience!
ralfd 10y ago
Sure, but non-obvious things often manifest in culture nonetheless. For example the romans with their mighty aqueducts, cleanliness rules in religion, drinking tea (needs boiled water) or beer/wine (alcohol desinfects), or being obsessed that evil witches dont poison your wells etc.
- mschuster91 10y ago
  > drinking tea beer/wine (alcohol desinfects) Also, beer provides large amounts of calories, so it also feeds the consumer with low risk of the "food" getting stale. There's a reason why in Bavaria a fat belly is called a "Bierbauch" ;)
  - Declanomous 10y ago
    A fat belly is literally called a beer gut or a beer belly in English as well.

bingomad123 10y ago

> It showed a Indians in a tiny village who were falling ill because they were literally taking a shit in the same river that they were getting their drinking water from, just a few meters away. Take the western media's portrayal of India's poverty with a little grain of salt. India is very poor and I lived in a village where people use to shit in open but then there is something like "poverty porn" that western media often engages in to get more eyeballs. In rural areas open shitting has its own unwritten rules. You shit far from water sources, temples and other places where people gather. You shit away from water wells. Sick people shit in a separate area. People do shit at riverside because easy availability of water but it is essentially tragedy of commons issue and it was very common to beatup people who took a dump near potable water sources.

throwaway12837 10y ago
It's not just India. They do it for countries ranging from Russia to China to Japan/Korea. The spin - not surprisingly - often matches whatever the current US geopolitical stance is at that point.

lostlogin 10y ago

There are other aspects to the problem that make it more complicated. A lack of decent bathrooms has been correlated with a risk of sexual violence in India - perhaps these people are going somewhere they feel safe? There are millions of links on this problem, here is one. https://www.google.co.nz/amp/s/tribune.com.pk/story/1265016/poor-toilet-access-contributes-india-rape-rise/%3Famp%3D1 https://www.google.co.nz/amp/s/tribune.com.pk/story/1265016/...

graycat 10y ago

Don't need much in the way of sewer pipes. I live in the US, in NY, 70 miles north of Wall Street, in a house with two bathtubs, four sinks, three toilets, one washing machine, and one dish washer, with nearly no use of "sewer pipes". Right, no city sewer. Instead there is some PVC pipe, cheap, super simple to work with, darned rugged, and, presto, bingo, a big concrete box in the ground just behind the main piece of big, white PVC pipe. That box is the septic tank. It's been working great, with essentially zero maintenance, for 20+ years. So, all the water used in the house, from the toilets, sinks, etc. is collected via PVC pipe and fed into the septic tank. The water from the septic tank flows into a "drain field" in the back yard. Works great. With the septic tank, there was only one problem only once: I had an infection on the edge of the nail on my left big toe and daily applied triple antibiotic cream (eventually cleared up the infection). Soon I had water, etc. bubbling up near the back of the back yard. Why? The antibiotic cream was powerful stuff; some of it got on my socks; when I washed the socks in the washing machine, some of the cream got into the septic tank and basically killed off the crucial bacteria that was eating everything not just H2O (right, and creating CO2 and methane which bubbled out, rarely noticeable). Solution? Sure, the grocery store sells a box of little, dry granules. So, flush about half of the box down any one of the toilets. Then the bacteria in the septic tank are alive and working again; the spot in the backyard dried up again, and no more problems! Just need a septic tank, a little PVC pipe, and no sewer pipe or sewer treatment plant, etc. For water, nope, I get nothing from the city. Instead I have a well. Well, the septic tank is in the back yard and the well, in the front yard -- not sure that makes much difference since the well is deep enough, likely 100+ feet, not to use "surface water". So, how do I get "pure water"? Hmm. Running out of a faucet or standing in a glass, the water looks fine. Eventually discover that the water is saturated with calcium carbonate, that is, limestone, if you will, marble. Why? Down there, maybe 100 feet, where the water comes from, there are some old, dead sea shells, however many hundreds of millions of years old. Otherwise I have a filter in the line: The filter is a tube about one foot long and 3 inches in diameter and made from some kind of foam or a lot of string wrapped tightly. My hardware store sells these for not very much, and they have several varieties that filter out everything down to some number of microns, different number for different varieties. One filter lasts for over a year. No evidence of disease in or from the water. Yes, the calcium carbonate ruined the dishwasher, so I wash dishes in the sink and dry them a traditional dish drain rack. I have the rack on a plastic base designed for that purpose, tilted, and set in an aluminum tray to catch the runoff water. So, after some months I can notice that, while the dishes dry nicely and look just squeaky clean, from all the water that ran into the aluminum tray and evaporated, some mud was left behind. So, the water seems to have calcium carbonate plus some additional dissolved solids that, after enough water has evaporated, look like mud. Or for all I know, the "mud" is left over dish detergent? Naw, I suspect the mud is dissolved solids. Maybe if I used a finer filter I would get less mud, but I doubt it. But the mud is doing me no harm. The usual remark from the local plumbers is that the water is safe to drink, won't hurt you. On the calcium carbonate in the water, yes I could use a water softener. Actually, I have one. To use it, have to buy big bags, maybe 40 pounds each, of rock salt, that is NaCl. The softener takes the water and converts the calcium carbonate to calcium chloride which is more soluable (doesn't settle out on hot water pipes), doesn't create the scum with old style soap does with calcium carbonate, and feels soapy or slippery in the water. For the chloride in the calcium chloride, that comes from the salt, the NaCl. For the carbonate from the calcium carbonate, that goes out the drain as sodium carbonate. The water softener has a big barrel with ion exchange resins, little beads that, when flushed with water with a high concentration of NaCl, grab some of the Cl. Then when flushed with water with calcium carbonate grab the carbonate and replace it with the chloride, thus converting the incoming calcium carbonate to calcium chloride. But the big tank with the beads gave trouble; I paid to have the tank serviced, etc. And the automatic unit with that tank that flushed the beads with salt water, from the big barrel of salt from the big bags of salt, gave trouble. So, I pushed a big red button that had the water bypass the softener and unplugged the softener control unit from the wall A/C power. So much for the water softener. Also, it does appear that calcium chloride from the softener can corrode the solder used in the copper pipes -- bummer. For the calcium carbonate, it is a curious chemical since hot water dissolves less of it than cold water, the opposite of most solids. So, when the water is heated in the hot water coils of my furnace [here I'm talking about the coils for the domestic hot water and not the hot water for heating the house], the calcium carbonate settles out on the inside of the coils and after six months or so lowers the flow rate of the domestic hot water. So, I went shopping and got a length of copper water pipe, the tools to work with copper water pipe, some shutoff valves, some faucet valves, some connection fittings, some lengths of garden hose with fittings and intended as supply and drain hoses for a washing machine, a drill pump with connections for garden hoses, some plastic cups, a plastic bucket, a gallon bottle of muriatic acid, and a big, several pound size, bag of baking soda. So, I used the tools and the copper pipe to install the faucet and shutoff valves at appropriate places in the copper pipes leading to and from the domestic hot water coils of the furnace and attached garden hoses to the faucet valves. Then one of the garden hoses goes to one side of the drill pump, and a hose from the pump and another hose from the faucets go to the bucket. So, using the valves, I run some water into the bucket, nearly fill the bucket. Using an old 1/4" electric drill, I turn on the drill pump and get water flowing from the bucket, into the coils, and back to the bucket. I put one of the little copper pipe fittings, a right angle elbow, in the bucket. Then I pour about 4 ounces of the muriatic acid into one of the plastic cups, maybe the same cups apparently so popular at college frat parties or on Spring Break, and pour that acid into the bucket. Soon I get, sure CO2 bubbles in the bucket. Also, right, review high school chemistry, I get some calcium chloride in the bucket. Why? Secret: Muriatic acid is hydrochloric acid, that is, HCl, about 28%. In the residential construction industry, the acid is commonly used to remove, right, lime from concrete off bricks. It also nearly instantly removes lime from the inside of copper pipes. When the rate of the bubbles slows down, I add another 4 ounces of muriatic acid to the water and observe that the rate of bubbles does not increase again. Guess: All the calcium carbonate is out of the copper pipes. Then I add maybe one teaspoon of the baking soda to the water and observe that I get bubbles: Guess: There is still plenty of hydrochloric acid in the water. So, conclusion: The domestic hot water pipes in the furnace are clean. Then I turn off the drill pump, place the ends of the hoses that were in the bucket in a plastic tray intended for kitty litter, remove the little copper elbow from the bucket, carry the bucket to the back yard, and throw the water with the acid in a wide sweep onto the grass (I never see any effect on the grass). I look at the little copper elbow for evidence that my use of the hydrochloric acid is corroding the copper pipe -- so far I have seen no such evidence. Actually, inside the furnace, the coil for domestic hot water is lined with Teflon so that calcium carbonate will be less likely to stick; no doubt the Teflon would also protect that pipe from the acid. Back in the house with the bucket, I insert the hoses into the bucket again, use the valves to fill the bucket nearly full again, adjust the valves, turn on the drill pump, and get water flowing again from the bucket to the coils and back. Then I add to the water in the bucket baking soda, about 1/2 cup at a time, until there are no more bubbles. Then I add another 1/2 cup of baking soda to the water to be more sure. Then, doing the right things with the drill pump, valves, and hoses again, I dump the water in the bucket again, fill the bucket again, use the drill pump to circulate relatively fresh water, turn off the drill pump, set the valves back for ordinary use, and again dump out the water in the bucket. At the kitchen sink, I let the hot water run for a while to be more sure I've removed all the hydrochloric acid or baking soda from the water, and declare the project done -- lots of hot water flow rate now for months! Of course, I don't have a wife and six daughters in the house with each of them each day taking three baths, washing six changes of clothes, and washing their hair! But, still, I have no city water, no city sewer, no sewer pipe, and no big problems. Sure, when my startup is successful, I will look into getting, say, reverse osmosis to give me domestic hot/cold water that is much closer to pure, distilled water, that is, just good, old H2O and nothing else. But for India, in a place rural enough to permit the women to walk to the woods at night and use the woods as a toilet, septic tanks and wells should be a really big step up and solution to the problem. About India, I've long suspected that such really bad aspects of their living conditions have been so common, even standard, for so long that they have long since just accepted that living like that is okay with little or no desire or effort to do anything about it.

abandonliberty 10y ago

This is an area for innovation. Managing change/altering beliefs are extremely difficult. To help iron deficiency in Cambodians, they were encouraged to cook with iron ingots. No one used them. So they shaped the ingot into a lotus flower. Dice. Cultural investigation showed that fish were symbols of luck, health, and happiness. Fish-shaped ingots worked out! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucky_iron_fish https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucky_iron_fish

mmanfrin 10y ago
This is very fascinating; it's so interesting when something as simple as the shape of an iron ingot can have such huge effects.
eru 10y ago
The Wikipedia article you linked says that the lotus flower shape was rejected as well.
- jellyd0ts 10y ago
  I don't know what he meant with "Dice.", but after that he did say that it was fish-shaped ingots that worked out. Does dice tend to mean success in this scenario?
  - Larrikin 10y ago
    The phrase is "No dice"
  - arfar 10y ago
    It could be a typo. "no dice" is an idiom in English for an "unfavorable result". https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/no_dice https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/no_dice
4684499 10y ago
Why don't they just use iron pans? It's more affordable and more natural, you don't have to put something in your food, and it's being heated directly at the bottom. Did they just invent this iron fish to create more jobs?

up_and_up 10y ago

> But somehow the problem persists, it's unbelievable. Before you get too high and mighty there.... Not long ago (1996) here in the USA, they were still removing all the outhouses that had been positioned directly over fresh-water streams all over Appalachia. See "Straight Piping". [1] Its easy to judge poor people in other countries, we forget how recently we were (and maybe still are) making similar mistakes. [1] - https://www.arc.gov/magazine/articles.asp?ARTICLE_ID=94 https://www.arc.gov/magazine/articles.asp?ARTICLE_ID=94

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
ticviking 10y ago
So how was the practice ended?
mostlyskeptical 10y ago
Even that link you posted says >Although most people with poor systems knew they had problems and wanted to correct them And also states that most of the problem is due to money (or lack of). In India even most of those in rural areas with toilets don't use them. [1] Further, even in urban areas of those those with access to toilets, 7.5% choose open defecation on the streets instead. Pretending that people that want indoor plumbing but can't afford it is the same situation as people with access to plumbing but don't use it is very disingenuous. [1]https://www.pri.org/stories/2016-05-12/india-access-toilets-remains-huge-problem-worst-all-women-and-girls https://www.pri.org/stories/2016-05-12/india-access-toilets-...
- throwaway12837 10y ago
  Can you blame them though ? If you've been to one of these old roadside stops, you'll know how bad Indian toilets stink. I'm guessing the lack of piped water does not help.
- escape_goat 10y ago
  Saying that people who have access to a public squat toilet in a rural area have "access to [indoor] plumbing but don't use it" might also be taken as disingenuous, but I suspect you were mainly not thinking carefully. No one fails to recognize the convenience of indoor plumbing. Running water right in your home is incredibly convenient. With a properly constructed drain system, it means you can also have a completely private place to defecate, indoors, a near-miracle of convenience. I do not think that this is a fair characterization of the proposal that is being rejected by some in India. It is possible that you have been inside a public squat toilet in a densely populated rural area, or for that matter even a poorly maintained public squat toilet in a busy urban shopping area. If so, it probably takes little effort to imagine yourself seriously considering defecation in a ditch, or an alleyway, as an alternative. If one had already been doing such all one's life, then there would be no obstacle of unfamiliarity, inexperience, or or public shame to discourage you. I do not see why one would not generally prefer to defecate in a familiar and comfortable manner, in the open air, rather than a small, dim room begrimed with the stench and trace faeces of thousands of previous acts of defecation, performed by strangers.

BurningFrog 10y ago

This sounds like part of the bigger problems of literacy and education. Solve those, and the toilet problem will disappear by itself.

balls187 10y ago

There are a non trivial number of people who believe the earth is flat. And these aren't Indians from a rural indian village.

kahrkunne 10y ago
A few thousand loonies on the Internet believing something weird but harmless doesn't weigh up to millions of Indians pooping on the street

thetruthseeker1 10y ago

Part of the problem is also because of lack of education. Unlike in the west, literacy rate is not as high, hence they miss out on the knowledge and awareness that can come from being able to read. But, India is making progress even on that front, so eventually I think both these improvements will complement one another nicely and things may be much different 10 years down the line. I am originally from India(now I live in US) and my grandfather who was a doctor in India back then in the 1950s would advise people who often fell ill to eat healthy and eat apple. People would ask him what Apple was and to describe it so that they can buy it in the market. My dad who also turned out to be a doctor said he didnt meet any patients who didnt know what Apple was...so yes, things change...but they take time.

zuron7 10y ago
I think this has to do more with the fact that Apples do not naturally grow in most of India. And I wouldn't doubt it if the whole An Apple a day was started by the US to help their agricultural exports. Westernisation of our palates has killed/reduced a lot of local foods. For example in the state of Karnataka, Wheat was unheard of a few decades ago, but now it's the primary consumed grain. Millets are making a comeback as wheat is unsustainable to grow in such an area. Responsible businesses are what we need.
- logfromblammo 10y ago
  AFAIK, apples originated near the Caspian Sea. That's not a tremendously long hike from India. India is currently the #5 grower of apples worldwide at 2.2 Tg. The US is #2, with 4.1 Tg. China is #1 with 37 Tg. Apple cultivation in India is in the northernmost states Jammu & Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, and Arunachal Pradesh. "An apple a day keeps the doctor away" possibly originated in 1866, in Pembrokeshire, Wales, with the current phrasing stabilizing in the 1920s. Previous expressions extolling the health virtues of apples also exist, but cannot be verifiably linked to later expressions. We don't actually know whether that expression derives from a mention in Ayurvedic medicine that is 1500 years old. If you doubt, do research. Indians have been eating apples for centuries before Americans started growing them.

trprog 10y ago

You are thinking of the problem in a sciencey, evidence based way. In particular for illiterate, uneducated people there is often a huge weight given to superstition and traditional/existing ways of doing things even in the face of evidence. It is a surprisingly hard nut to crack, sometimes even among literate educated people. If it weren't a lot of religious extremism and bigotry would not exist.

parennoob 10y ago

I will bet that most of the comments in this thread are from people who have never lived in rural India. I have, and will tell you the real reason. It has little to do with literacy or education. It is because (warning, this is going ironic) Indian people are incredibly disgusted about shit and want to not think about dealing with it. I'm Indian myself. For example, we think toilet paper is a horrible idea. You just clean your shit with...paper...and just leave it like that? That would not fly, even in any of the villages you mention. They have to have water to clean their shit, usually supplied in a small bucket or vessel. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lota_(vessel) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lota_(vessel) Now think about temperatures. The current temperature at many places in India is more than a 100 degrees Fahrenheit. Your average restroom or shovel pit or whatever is going to smell incredibly bad and be full of flies and a horrible smell. That is why some people prefer the river, and don't use the toilets that are built for them (links elsewhere in this thread). Solutions? It's a usability problem. Bidets for poop washing that can be filled up instead of using piped water, super hydrophobic coatings, really large pits (so you don't smell the waste) –- things like that are going to be the solution. Unfortunately, no one approaches it in that way, and prefers to go the route of "Let's teach these uneducated savages not to shit where they eat." This is very unfortunate and I hope it will change in the future.

throwaway12837 10y ago
AFAIK no one poops in the river either (that would be one tricky feat); they poop on fields adjoining the banks and wash up afterwards. In places like Haridwar one gets screamed at for as little as putting the footwear in the stream. Then again there are sewer dumping into Ganga all over the place (though this was/is being challenged) - starting in fact from a few hundred meters down from Hari ki Paudi. I don't know. Since Indian literature (and with it the languages) have essentially become comatose, perhaps the country has lost all ability to make logical deductions [1], that'd be necessary for any level of consistency. [1] No, I know Sanskrit deals very much with logic and reasoning and grammar. I don't see so much as a vestige today, however. May be since it was/is practiced by a tiny minority that may not be all the surprising.

babyrainbow 10y ago

Ok. "Educated" people don't shit where they drink from. But they do much worse. Things like dumping toxic industrial waste that can make a whole region of people chronically ill to a river..Or drive machines that spew toxic gases literally to the face of fellow human beings.. I mean, is anyone really any better?

perfmode 10y ago
externalities are different, no?
- babyrainbow 10y ago
  are they?
a_imho 10y ago
Out of sight, out of mind.
Kluny 10y ago
I honestly don't think education is the point here. _Dogs_ don't shit where they eat. Pet rats can be persuaded to poop in their cages and not on your couch. There's some kind of pressure happening here that the researchers failed to notice. Maybe leaving the village is unsafe - girls can't walk 50m downstream to a designated toilet because they'll be attacked and raped along the way. Maybe there are tigers. Maybe a tragedy of the commons has occurred where no one is maintaining the designated toilet so it turns into a disgusting pile of feces that reeks from kilmeters away. Why would anyone want to defecate there? The river probably feels cleaner, even if they know better.
- alikoneko 10y ago
  My rats were litter trained actually. It took literally 1 day. During free-roaming time, I would just open the cage and put a ladder up to the bottom floor of the cage. They'd return home when they had to poop or pee. However, pet rats might not be a good example here. This might be anecdata, but my girls would eat, shit, and sleep in the litter box. I had to buy grated ferret litter boxes to keep one from getting sick. She got E.Coli from sleeping in the litter box, and it presented as a URI. Talking with other rat owners, this wasn't uncommon behavior either.

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tomaskafka 10y ago

Check out how we, the 'wise modern civilization' splash all our chemicals and shit into the rivers and oceans, and then eat fish from there. I bet we will be looked at as 'these savage guys were totally dumb, look at them, it's unbelievable' about 50 - 150 years later. Also, you americans take away your babies from your mothers after few weeks, putting them to a cold hearted institutions, making them frustrated for life? In exchange for what, extra 1 % of GDP from working mothers? That's a pretty bad deal I must say. Most people in Europe would see this as a barbaric practice, as we know children need a close contact with parents till at least 2.5 years (don't you study developmental psychology there?), and our social systems support that. (wanted to show that we both are 'those dumb indians' from some more civilized point of view)

shard972 10y ago
I get your point but at least you get the 1% GDP gain, what upside is there to shitting in your drinking water? It's few steps closer?
- keypress 10y ago
  A little bit of vitamin B12.
- AnthonBerg 10y ago
  It's close, and the river washes everything away. You don't know about or understand the rest. How would you?, nobody thought to tell you. Life is difficult.
vivekd 10y ago
I don't think that really answers the parent's point. The connection between cholera and shitting where you drink is an obvious one. The connection between putting kids in daycare and polluting the ocean and whatever bad things come out of that are a few times removed and remote. It's a lot easier to see that drinking poo water will make you sick than it is to see that putting kids into daycare will "frustrate them for life."

throw_away_elec 10y ago

>> "Among other things, they contain the world's earliest known system of flush toilets." [1] >> "With a number of courtyard houses having both a washing platform and a dedicated toilet / waste disposal hole. The toilet holes would be flushed by emptying a jar of water, drawn from the house's central well, through a clay brick pipe and into a shared brick drain" [1] Amazing. This was about the Indus Valley Civilization in 3300–1300 BCE. It's interesting to note that how much a civilization, like Rome after the collapse as shown in the below thread, can lose much of cultural or technical advances it made earlier. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanitation_of_the_Indus_Valley_Civilisation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanitation_of_the_Indus_Valley...

keypress 10y ago

It's a little more complicated than digging a hole in the ground. You have to ensure you don't poison the water table with run off or monsoons. Protect them from pests. Aerobic composting is simple when liquids are removed (urine separator and no black water). Pumping air through toilet chambers can help remove smells. I live in the UK, and as I age, I seem to be loosing control of certain physical faculties. And we have a distinct lack of public toilets, which is ridiculous. You need toilets dotted everywhere which you are comfortable using. In very highly populated areas using water as a transport has been somewhat miraculous. But it's not always appropriate. Recycling waste locally is probably a good idea where you can. Night soil sounds primitive, but is pretty neat. Problems arise when raw sewage comes into contact with foods etc. Composting sewage, delays usage, but removes health risks and improves the resulting output. I actually resent flushing my own turds down the toilet when my garden really could do with the input. But when two thirds of my water bill is for waste, you think twice about constructing alternatives.

JulianMorrison 10y ago
The UK used to have public toilets. Then it had Conservatives. Councils can't fund facilities with money they no longer have. "But you can use the loo in Costa" says the Tory. Nope, not if you're homeless or poor or it's after closing time.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]

bahularora 10y ago

There are many things that are unbelievable you would be surprised, POTUS and many educated Americans not believing in Climate change. believing that they are waging a war on terror, religious/racial discrimination existing in modern society.

keypusher 10y ago

The problem is that is a billion people, and they aren't the only ones who live next to that river. It's the people upstream who are also defecating into the river that are likely causing them to get sick. And digging a hole in the field for the village to go in can be a bad idea because that area becomes a breeding ground for all kinds of bad stuff. This isn't like when you went camping and pooped in the bushes one time. This is millions of people, every day, for decades. The waste builds up unless it's taken care of, and putting your waste into the river where it will be washed away starts to look like a viable strategy. Maybe these people aren't as dumb as you think, they just live in a very different environment and didn't have your education.