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Digging a hole is more challenging than you think. It has to be deep enough, and far enough away from a home, road, water source, food supply, etc. Not all com

Digging a hole is more challenging than you think. It has to be deep enough, and far enough away from a home, road, water source, food supply, etc. Not all communities have a lot of extra land, so you're talking one or two communal toilets, which need to be large to support a large population, and someone has to maintain them. If you have the land, you have to have money to construct them, as well as labor. Many households can't afford the $1 (that's one US dollar) construction cost, or the household simply can't perform the labor. In some cases, villages will come together to help fund and construct pit latrines, but these are the exception. Most just put up with the shame and disease of open defecation. Once you do have them, you have cultural issues like India's manual scavenging problem (http://www.thealternative.in/society/manual-scavenging-thought-you-had-the-shittiest-job-in-the-world-think-again/ http://www.thealternative.in/society/manual-scavenging-thoug...) not to mention you literally have to go out and inform millions of tiny remote villages about why and how to change. It's very hard to get people to change. Assuming outreach of one week per village, for the 600K censused villages in India, that's 11,506 years to just inform and convince them all to build pit latrines. Even 50 outreach teams would take 250 years. With 500 teams you can cut it down to 23 years.

JoeAltmaier 8y ago
And with viral growth, 10 years? Once 'everybody is doing it' it may not take as much time. How long did it take for cell phones to reach the most remote villages?
gnarbarian 8y ago
>It has to be deep enough, and far enough away from a home, road, water source, food supply, etc. Not all communities have a lot of extra land, so you're talking one or two communal toilets, which need to be large to support a large population, and someone has to maintain them. Literally any deep hole practically anywhere is a damn sight better than open defecation straight into the river, on the bank, or all over the streets. And it doesn't take an act of congress to fund it and change building codes, a civil engineer, excavator, and team of union laborers to get this stuff done like it does in the west. You just need someone who is personally motivated and determined and a shovel ideally. like this guy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dashrath_Manjhi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dashrath_Manjhi All you need is one person who knows that digging a hole would keep his kid from getting sick and dying and you'd have more trouble trying to stop him from digging that hole for an outhouse. When that clicks for them. That their kid or wife or husband wouldn't have died if they bothered to dig an outhouse, they will be doing the work and telling everyone they know and also nagging people till their ears fell off when they catch someone shitting in the street.

JoeAltmaier 8y ago

And with viral growth, 10 years? Once 'everybody is doing it' it may not take as much time. How long did it take for cell phones to reach the most remote villages?

gnarbarian 8y ago

>It has to be deep enough, and far enough away from a home, road, water source, food supply, etc. Not all communities have a lot of extra land, so you're talking one or two communal toilets, which need to be large to support a large population, and someone has to maintain them. Literally any deep hole practically anywhere is a damn sight better than open defecation straight into the river, on the bank, or all over the streets. And it doesn't take an act of congress to fund it and change building codes, a civil engineer, excavator, and team of union laborers to get this stuff done like it does in the west. You just need someone who is personally motivated and determined and a shovel ideally. like this guy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dashrath_Manjhi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dashrath_Manjhi All you need is one person who knows that digging a hole would keep his kid from getting sick and dying and you'd have more trouble trying to stop him from digging that hole for an outhouse. When that clicks for them. That their kid or wife or husband wouldn't have died if they bothered to dig an outhouse, they will be doing the work and telling everyone they know and also nagging people till their ears fell off when they catch someone shitting in the street.