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India’s Toilet Race Failing as Villages Don’t Use Them

72 points by eplanit 12y ago

conover 12y ago
Think of the children, seriously: http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/07/15/world/asia/poor-sanitation-in-india-may-afflict-well-fed-children-with-malnutrition.html?referrer= http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/07/15/world/asia/poor-sanitat...
neil_s 12y ago
I am actually blown away by the hateful and bigoted nature of the comments on a site like Bloomberg.com! Didn't expect it to attract those kinds of readers.
- ChrisNorstrom 12y ago
  People often forget how their ancestors lived. They forget when Europe was such a feces ridden hell hole that it incubated the Black Plague. Of course, now it's a first world continent. Through hard work, introspect, and sacrifice "western culture & people" have become the greatest rags to riches story in history (so far). China, India, & Africa will one day have their own.
  - voidlogic 12y ago
    > They forget when Europe was such a feces ridden hell hole that it incubated the Black Plague. For Yersinia pestis (the black death) public sanitation is not a factor... Waste management also often wasn't as bad as people imagine today, the stories of the worst, not average sanitations are what are most commonly related about the past (why, shock value of course).
    - xenadu02 12y ago
      Yeah but we get the point - cholera was the appropriate disease to cite, many outbreaks caused when the sewage people dumped in the streets or rivers seeped into groundwater supplies and wells.
  - dalke 12y ago
    There's no need to single out Europe. The Black Plague is believed to have started in central Asia and also depopulated India and Muslim regions including Mecca. Nor is there need to go so far back in time. The British were in such poor health that 40% of their military volunteers for the Boer War and the First World War were unfit, in part because of malnutrition and diet deficiencies like rickets. Much of this was due to poverty, and a belief by the rich in laissez-faire capitalism, where issues like clean water, working sewage, and uncontaminated foods were something best left to the markets, not the government. Much of the gains were seem to have been through social democracy in one form or other, with at least government oversight if not outright control of water, food, health services, etc. It probably helps they haven't continued their long held tradition of invading each other every generation or so. I can't say though I'm fond of the 'sacrifice' that is the White Man's Burden, or the hard work that is conquering and ruling other countries. Personally, I think Japan and (South) Korea also have impressive rags-to-riches stories, especially considering Japanese seclusion until the mid-1800s. (Japan of course modeling itself on Imperial Germany, and hoping to keep itself out of the the hands Western imperialism, as befell China and India.) Of course, it's also possible to rank "riches" by GDP, in which case Qatar is the clear winner, since it became a high income economy only since the 1950s.
- harmegido 12y ago
  It's very interesting because I was struck that the western world has its own from of a public health epidemic caused by cultural standards: sedentary working and obesity.
  - fiatmoney 12y ago
    Obesity isn't contagious in the same sense that fecally transmitted diseases are. "Public health" actually has a meaning beyond "big health problem".
    - DanBC 12y ago
      I'm unsure what meaning you're attaching to "public health". Here are en.Wikipedia, a UK Government site, and a training programme from the US CDC about their Public Health Prevention Service which talks about Obesity. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_health http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_health https://www.gov.uk/government/topics/public-health https://www.gov.uk/government/topics/public-health http://www.cdc.gov/phps/More.html http://www.cdc.gov/phps/More.html All three of these reputable sources specifically mention obesity as a public health problem. What source are you using for your more restricted meaning of the term?
  - Houshalter 12y ago
    Sedentary working probably isn't the cause of obesity. It takes a significant amount of exercise to lose weight. There are also plenty of people in third world countries that have relatively sedentary jobs.
- Houshalter 12y ago
  FWIW it seems to be one guy posting thousands of racist comments in all caps. Although without proper moderation, all it takes is one guy to drown out everyone else.
  - Houshalter 12y ago
    Never mind, all of the comments there are incredibly racist and dumb.
sekasi 12y ago
A mate of mine once said you can rate the quality of a society based of the quality of their toilets. At the time I shrugged it off a bit, but certainly there's a bit of merit to that statement.
- justinpombrio 12y ago
  Most of the world lags far behind Japan, then.
  - byoung2 12y ago
    Japan has some of the best (heated seats, built-in bidet, etc), and some of the worst (squat-style, no toilet paper), so on average Japan is just so-so. Of the 40 countries I've been to, the United states has the best average toilet standard.
    - sixQuarks 12y ago
      that is the amazing thing about Japan. They have the largest discrepancy (by far), of private/public bathrooms. I'd love to know why that is.
      - bluefinity 12y ago
        Builders get kickbacks from the manufacturer of these smart toilets if they choose to put one in when their client doesn't specify what toilet they want. Probably not the only reason, but it definitely contributes.
      - deciplex 12y ago
        The reason for it, i.e. the reason you believe this, is likely confirmation bias I think. There are poor-quality restrooms in Japan, but whether they are 'public' or 'private' has little to do with it. You can go to a city office, or a police station, and it's even odds what you'll find. Likewise, you can go to a shopping center, and also find examples of both, and I will say that personally some of the worst restrooms I've seen in Japan have been in older shopping malls. Train stations will run the gamut, which doesn't give much evidence either way, regardless of whether you consider those public or private. Parks tend to be lower quality, but there are exceptions. Instead, what you'll find is that it tends to depend on the age of the building. There are seem to be very few examples of low-quality restrooms built in Japan in the last 10-15 years, regardless of who paid for the building.
XorNot 12y ago
It utterly hadn't occurred to me that there'd actually be a cultural issue on something like this. It's an incredibly alien concept.
- sixQuarks 12y ago
  yeah, it's pretty funny when the girl was quoted pointing at the forest "It's only natural to go there". She does have a point though. Problem is, it's not really "natural" to have 7 billion people roaming the earth, thus you can't just use your natural instincts about everything.
- parennoob 12y ago
  It's not really a cultural issue. [1] If you are particularly puzzled, go to a campsite with vault toilets and stay there for 6 weeks. Afterwards, you will probably think going in the open is way better too. -- [1] Well, not primarily anyway -- though I suspect poop is actually considered more disgusting in Indian culture than Western culture, which leads to the "dump it and get the hell away" mentality, which reinforces the lack of use of these toilets.
refurb 12y ago
I always found the idea that India has a sanitation problem because it's too much money to build a proper one confusing. I mean, most Western nations built their sewer system when they were much poorer than India. It now seems like they don't have proper sewer systems because there just isn't the demand.
- orky56 12y ago
  Actually India is credited with developing some of the first sewer systems and first flush toilets. Unfortunately, many things between then and now have fundamentally changed. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanitation_of_the_Indus_Valley_Civilization http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanitation_of_the_Indus_Valley_...)
  - jessaustin 12y ago
    Crediting "India" for the practices of people who lived in the same physical location thousands of years ago seems like a stretch. You might as well credit the English for building Stonehenge, or me for hunting bison with a wood-and-stone spear.
- fleitz 12y ago
  Rural india is much different than urban india. Even in wester nations, many rural areas don't have sewer systems, they have septic tanks.
QuantumChaos 12y ago
I hope they can figure this issue out. As a westerner who never considered not using a toilet, I'm having trouble understanding the pros and cons of using toilets at all. What happens if a person defecates in the fields? Does this spread bacteria to other people living nearby, or people who eat crops grown in those fields? What are the beneficiaries of me using a toilet instead of the fields? My family? The people living nearby? Hopefully providing accurate information on these matters will help villagers make better choices.
- jessaustin 12y ago
  ...never considered not using a toilet... I grew up in and have lived for long stretches in rural areas, so this seems very strange to admit. Have you never spent time in the wilderness? As for your questions, I'd say that a field where food is grown is among the worst places in which to defecate.
  - bane 12y ago
    > I'd say that a field where food is grown is among the worst places in which to defecate. It wasn't all that uncommon (and may still be in some places) for people to use a removable catch in their outhouses so they can remove it and use it for fertilizer. I don't know about India, but I've seen traditional systems like this in various parts of Asia. I wouldn't recommend it today now that we know about germs and things. But I wouldn't be surprised at all if people defecated in their crop fields with some regularity since it's good for the plants.
    - jessaustin 12y ago
      My experience in gardening leads me to believe that "fresh" manure is actually not that great for plants. However, pile it up and let it stew for a year or two and you're left with good fertilizer. TBH, I've only used livestock manure for gardens, so perhaps human manure is different, but I rather doubt it.
- ChrisNorstrom 12y ago
  You do have a point. As long as they bury it a foot or so underground it's actually quite natural. Otherwise: 1) It builds up over time. Is easy to step on and cultivates bacteria and disease. 2) It runs off into streams, lakes, crop fields, water supplies. (normally, all animal feces does this. It increases the bacteria rate in lakes and streams by tiny amounts. But when humans do it en mass it creates problems.)
suprgeek 12y ago
Two states in particular of India, Uttar Pradesh (U.P) & Bihar are the worst affected by this phenomenon. Both have very large populations and deeply entrenched caste systems that are at the root of a lot of this non-sense. The long term solution unfortunately is only time - as the older, slower to change people die off, the newer kids start to assert them selves. Now the society needs to pour in resources for two things and two things mainly - Education - Teach people about Germ theory, Viruses, etc (among other things) every five year old should be screaming about this stuff. Women's empowerment - Get more women to participate in decision making (via tax incentives etc) and get them to drive the sanitation effort.
- fiatmoney 12y ago
  "deeply entrenched caste systems that are at the root of a lot of this non-sense" Could you explain?
  - michaelbuddy 12y ago
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caste_system_in_India http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caste_system_in_India
    - dominotw 12y ago
      Thats not what he asking. He is asking how caste system relates to toilet issue.
      - lobotryas 12y ago
        FTA: >Only dalits, the lowest Hindu caste, should be exposed to excrement in a closed space, “or city-dwellers who don’t have space to go in the open,” said Sunita, who uses one name, as she washed clothes next to the concrete latrine. “Feces don’t belong under the same roof as where we eat and sleep.”
      - kamaal 12y ago
        Oh, there is some thousands of years of historical perspective behind that. Historically lower castes in India were supposed to be the people responsible for cleaning, janitorial work etc. That's more like putting it mildly, they were sort of forced generations after generations to do absolutely despicable stuff like scavenging human waste. Cleaning streets, gutters etc. What's more you are forbidden to marry outside your caste, and there was a another social disease called untouchability- which was basically you can't share the same space with the lower castes. Like religious places etc. There are some extreme instances where people weren't even allowed to walk on the same roads. They were barred from education, or any other work of dignity. In short the worst kind of jobs were left for the lower caste. And people expect the same to continue, now as well!
hingisundhorsa 12y ago
I don't know much about the actual conditions in North India. But this article contains some markers that are at best suggestive of exaggeration, at worst maybe falsification. Eg, high levels of descriptive details that don't seem to be relevant and also don't mesh together: 1. Sunita’s family in the north Indian village of Mukimpur 2. When nature calls, the 26-year-old single mother and her four children head toward the jungle next to their farm of red and pink roses, to a field of tall grass, flecked with petals, where the 7,000 people of her village go to defecate and exchange gossip. 7000 people is a lot of people. Especially for a village. A quick check shows Mukimpur in the 2011 census only has a population of either 42 or 151. http://ourhero.in/population/villages/mukimpur-111460 http://ourhero.in/population/villages/mukimpur-111460 http://www.populationofindia.co.in/uttar-pradesh/muzaffarnagar/jansath/.mukimpur http://www.populationofindia.co.in/uttar-pradesh/muzaffarnag... Taking a look in Maps: https://maps.google.com.my/maps?q=Mukimpur,+Uttar+Pradesh,+India&hl=en&ll=28.361038,77.918419&spn=0.004522,0.008256&sll=3.232214,101.380968&sspn=2.626814,4.22699&oq=mukimpur&hnear=Mukimpur,+Bulandshahar,+Uttar+Pradesh,+India&t=h&z=18&lci=com.panoramio.all https://maps.google.com.my/maps?q=Mukimpur,+Uttar+Pradesh,+I... Seems like there's maybe 100 structures there max, even if all were houses, how do you get 7000 people? There definitely maybe a toilet problem, but I doubt this article is shedding light on the cause.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
  - kaptain 12y ago
    Just western media? I myself am quite ignorant of media from other places in the world. In your experience is there a type of media that is more truthful in the way it describes situations? From my perspective, the emphasis isn't on the details of the description. Rather, the core of the article is really an account of the problem of sanitation. India has so many people that I just glossed over the number of people in the village. Thus this possible discrepancy didn't bother me.
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
chime 12y ago
This isn't an issue of using clean toilets with plumbing vs. open fields. This is using a porcelain port-a-potty with no plumbing vs. open fields. Plumbing is the real issue, not the actual toilets.
- xenadu02 12y ago
  Bingo! The real problem in these areas is the lack of running water. Without the water, you can't flush the stuff away into a sewer or septic system.
parennoob 12y ago
[Indian here, who has some experience using these toilets.] I am not surprised by this, and could have seen it coming a mile away. This is primarily a user experience problem. Warning: graphic discussions of poop-related engineering problems ahead. "With little access to running water, government latrines typically consist of a large, concrete septic tank with a ceramic squat-toilet on top, enclosed by a cement or brick cubicle with a narrow door." This is essentially the same as the vault toilets that you find at campsites in the US. I have used them when in a village, and the smell inside is horrible. It's worse in India than US campsites, because the toilets are squatting ones, and your nose is closer to the septic tank. There are a ton of flies buzzing around all the time. Also, the warm weather makes the stuff in the septic tank decompose faster. Compared to this, I would prefer "going" in the open field any day, which is exactly what the woman they quoted says. Some solutions to this are: 1) Get more ventilation in the toilets. Possibly a solar-powered exhaust fan. This will reduce the smell. 2) Have some sort of smell-blocking chemical barrier between the septic tank and the toilet hole, like they have in airline toilets. This will reduce the smell even further. 3) As they mentioned, most toilets don't have running water. Most people bring a little bucket of water with them to wash up after the act. Have some sort of spraying system that you can load that water into, and wash up. Or try your best to get running water or a rainwater catchment tank providing water to such a system. If I had any leverage at all with the officials building these, I would strongly recommend the solutions above. Just building a toilet is not a panacea, you also have to make them so that people strongly prefer them to existing practices.
- ChrisNorstrom 12y ago
  Come to think of it, is a "feces graveyard" a much better solution? As long as they bury feces it a foot or so underground it shouldn't be a problem and sounds a lot more hygienic than the smelly septic tank holes. As long as they mark where feces are buried they can avoid digging them up and let them naturally compost.
  - parennoob 12y ago
    Possibly, something like an elevated platform above a large area might be a better solution for smaller villages. For larger villages, I think you might get into cost-benefit tradeoffs, because the pit might need to be large, and some sort of mechanical system to turn the earth might be required to encourage composting.
bruceb 12y ago
Not surprising. Even in places with running water and electricity the toilets can be horrible. The reason the toilet cleaning people are shunned is because they are not given the right tools and protection. When we clean a toilet in the US we have plastic gloves, toilet bowl cleaning solution, disposable cleaning pad and/or a brush meant for cleaning toilets. Often a worker cleaning that in India doesn't have that. Hence only the lowly person does the cleaning and is looked as doing something icky. Giving toilet and bathroom cleaners a uniform and the proper tools and protections might be a good places to spend money to ensure better toilets. This is my total pop psych opinion after visiting lots of Indian toilets and talking with different people about why toilets in India are so bad.
dominotw 12y ago
WARNING: If you are an Indian, do not read the comments on that article.
avighnay 12y ago
What we end up doing is comparing the apples of present day hygiene etiquette to the oranges of what is remnant of a hygiene system that has worked quite well in its hey days. What is this system is remnant of is; A very sound personal hygiene system followed for centuries, bathing two times a day, washing ones feet before entering a house, not wearing footwear inside one's house, cremating the dead outside the boundaries of the village, designated community space outside the village for natures call, two separate ponds in every village one for bathing (with separate designated bathing steps for women and men) and the other for washing clothes and a special pond inside every village temple for ritual bathing. Population has made the existence of this system impractical but that does not mean people will just change overnight relatively speaking. In fact, up till a few generations back, most Indians would be aghast at the unhygienic notion that one can have a toilet inside one's home! For eg. a reverse bias is, even today a rustic villager in the remotest part of rural India would cringe when he/she hears that the people in the west just wipe but not wash after they do their job (most Indians, even the ones in the west now, secretly do cringe at this idea in fact). Why this notional difference? It could be the relative availability of water, the extremes of weather (cannot wash in icy cold water can you?) and such differences that existed in one's past which moulds one's personal hygiene etiquette.
- parennoob 12y ago
  Spot on. Your comment hits the other, psychological aspect of the this problem (look at mine for the practical aspect). Correct your formatting a bit though, "What this system is remnant of" is cut off and confusing, "eg." should be "e.g." (for 'example gratia'), etc.
- jamesaguilar 12y ago
  I can understand the cringe-inducing nature of wiping, but it doesn't actually have negative health consequences. Thus, it is not really comparable.
- kamaal 12y ago
  >>In fact, up till a few generations back, most Indians would be aghast at the unhygienic notion that one can have a toilet inside one's home! Up till a few generations back, some one's home was clean because some lower class guys were cleaning up while the higher class guy enjoyed their hygiene. Or in other words this was at the expense of other fellow human beings who did all the clean up while one could brag about ancient methods of hygiene. No civilized society would accept such a classification of people in the modern times. So a person is expected to clean their own mess. You are right when you say >>What we end up doing is comparing the apples of present day hygiene etiquette to the oranges of what is remnant of a hygiene system that has worked quite well in its hey days.
PhantomGremlin 12y ago
Unfortunately, thanks to globalization, India's health problems become our health problems. A recent NY Times article [1] said: Medicines Made in India Set Off Safety Worries ... India’s pharmaceutical industry supplies 40 percent of over-the-counter and generic prescription drugs consumed in the United States BTW we're even more dependent on China. The same article goes on to say: The crucial ingredients for nearly all antibiotics, steroids and many other lifesaving drugs are now made exclusively in China. Edit: I may not have made my point clear. What I'm referring to is a cultural issue. What I would consider to be the "casual" attitude in large parts of India toward sanitation means they might not be as conscientious in adhering to proper manufacturing safety procedures as I would like. The NY Times also ran a recent article on poor sanitation in India. [2] [1] http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/15/world/asia/medicines-made-in-india-set-off-safety-worries.html http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/15/world/asia/medicines-made-... [2] http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/15/world/asia/poor-sanitation-in-india-may-afflict-well-fed-children-with-malnutrition.html http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/15/world/asia/poor-sanitation...
- jamesaguilar 12y ago
  How is this in any way related to sanitation problems in Indian villages?
  - PhantomGremlin 12y ago
    If workers at pharmaceutical plants are going home every day to "casual" attitudes about sanitation, they are much more likely to have these same "casual" attitudes at work. If they're not worried about things like "night soil", they probably aren't worried about contamination at work, either. It's easy to have problems making pharmaceuticals. It's bad enough in the USA, I'm sure its worse in third world countries. E.g. here's something that an FDA report said [1]: Microbial contamination is a risk to biologic product quality and safety. The cost of inadequate microbial control in biologic product manufacture is enormous as facilities or bioreactor production trains may have to be shut down for lengthy periods of time ... The recent cases of bacterial contamination of biologic products suggest that preventative maintenance plans ... need further attention. Sorry, I know this is a horrible stereotype. But what happened to the "good old days" when the Swiss made our medicine? [1] http://www.fda.gov/downloads/AboutFDA/CentersOffices/CDER/UCM275353.pdf http://www.fda.gov/downloads/AboutFDA/CentersOffices/CDER/UC...
kolev 12y ago
Is there any proof that diarrhea is due to the lack of toilets? Although septic toilet is still a toilet, I don't think it's orders of magnitude more hygienic solution for a densely populated area. It requires maintenance and cleaning, and in an area with heavy rains, it could be a disaster (according the article, it's concrete one that can easily overflow). I think they should address the running water and soap before tackling the toilet issue!
known 12y ago
People in India hate their Neighbourhood due to http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/16/opinion/sunday/caste-is-not-past.html http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/16/opinion/sunday/caste-is-no... and http://www.rediff.com/news/slide-show/slide-show-1-is-india-most-racist-country-in-the-world-/20131017.htm http://www.rediff.com/news/slide-show/slide-show-1-is-india-...
ender89 12y ago
... I mean, if you showed me a dingy outhouse on one hand and a serene field on the other, I can kind of see the appeal. Until you realize that the serene field is full of other people's poop anyway.

72 points by eplanit 12y ago

Think of the children, seriously: http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/07/15/world/asia/poor-sanitation-in-india-may-afflict-well-fed-children-with-malnutrition.html?referrer= http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/07/15/world/asia/poor-sanitat...

neil_s 12y ago

I am actually blown away by the hateful and bigoted nature of the comments on a site like Bloomberg.com! Didn't expect it to attract those kinds of readers.

ChrisNorstrom 12y ago
People often forget how their ancestors lived. They forget when Europe was such a feces ridden hell hole that it incubated the Black Plague. Of course, now it's a first world continent. Through hard work, introspect, and sacrifice "western culture & people" have become the greatest rags to riches story in history (so far). China, India, & Africa will one day have their own.
- voidlogic 12y ago
  > They forget when Europe was such a feces ridden hell hole that it incubated the Black Plague. For Yersinia pestis (the black death) public sanitation is not a factor... Waste management also often wasn't as bad as people imagine today, the stories of the worst, not average sanitations are what are most commonly related about the past (why, shock value of course).
  - xenadu02 12y ago
    Yeah but we get the point - cholera was the appropriate disease to cite, many outbreaks caused when the sewage people dumped in the streets or rivers seeped into groundwater supplies and wells.
- dalke 12y ago
  There's no need to single out Europe. The Black Plague is believed to have started in central Asia and also depopulated India and Muslim regions including Mecca. Nor is there need to go so far back in time. The British were in such poor health that 40% of their military volunteers for the Boer War and the First World War were unfit, in part because of malnutrition and diet deficiencies like rickets. Much of this was due to poverty, and a belief by the rich in laissez-faire capitalism, where issues like clean water, working sewage, and uncontaminated foods were something best left to the markets, not the government. Much of the gains were seem to have been through social democracy in one form or other, with at least government oversight if not outright control of water, food, health services, etc. It probably helps they haven't continued their long held tradition of invading each other every generation or so. I can't say though I'm fond of the 'sacrifice' that is the White Man's Burden, or the hard work that is conquering and ruling other countries. Personally, I think Japan and (South) Korea also have impressive rags-to-riches stories, especially considering Japanese seclusion until the mid-1800s. (Japan of course modeling itself on Imperial Germany, and hoping to keep itself out of the the hands Western imperialism, as befell China and India.) Of course, it's also possible to rank "riches" by GDP, in which case Qatar is the clear winner, since it became a high income economy only since the 1950s.
harmegido 12y ago
It's very interesting because I was struck that the western world has its own from of a public health epidemic caused by cultural standards: sedentary working and obesity.
- fiatmoney 12y ago
  Obesity isn't contagious in the same sense that fecally transmitted diseases are. "Public health" actually has a meaning beyond "big health problem".
  - DanBC 12y ago
    I'm unsure what meaning you're attaching to "public health". Here are en.Wikipedia, a UK Government site, and a training programme from the US CDC about their Public Health Prevention Service which talks about Obesity. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_health http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_health https://www.gov.uk/government/topics/public-health https://www.gov.uk/government/topics/public-health http://www.cdc.gov/phps/More.html http://www.cdc.gov/phps/More.html All three of these reputable sources specifically mention obesity as a public health problem. What source are you using for your more restricted meaning of the term?
- Houshalter 12y ago
  Sedentary working probably isn't the cause of obesity. It takes a significant amount of exercise to lose weight. There are also plenty of people in third world countries that have relatively sedentary jobs.
Houshalter 12y ago
FWIW it seems to be one guy posting thousands of racist comments in all caps. Although without proper moderation, all it takes is one guy to drown out everyone else.
- Houshalter 12y ago
  Never mind, all of the comments there are incredibly racist and dumb.

sekasi 12y ago

A mate of mine once said you can rate the quality of a society based of the quality of their toilets. At the time I shrugged it off a bit, but certainly there's a bit of merit to that statement.

justinpombrio 12y ago
Most of the world lags far behind Japan, then.
- byoung2 12y ago
  Japan has some of the best (heated seats, built-in bidet, etc), and some of the worst (squat-style, no toilet paper), so on average Japan is just so-so. Of the 40 countries I've been to, the United states has the best average toilet standard.
  - sixQuarks 12y ago
    that is the amazing thing about Japan. They have the largest discrepancy (by far), of private/public bathrooms. I'd love to know why that is.
    - bluefinity 12y ago
      Builders get kickbacks from the manufacturer of these smart toilets if they choose to put one in when their client doesn't specify what toilet they want. Probably not the only reason, but it definitely contributes.
    - deciplex 12y ago
      The reason for it, i.e. the reason you believe this, is likely confirmation bias I think. There are poor-quality restrooms in Japan, but whether they are 'public' or 'private' has little to do with it. You can go to a city office, or a police station, and it's even odds what you'll find. Likewise, you can go to a shopping center, and also find examples of both, and I will say that personally some of the worst restrooms I've seen in Japan have been in older shopping malls. Train stations will run the gamut, which doesn't give much evidence either way, regardless of whether you consider those public or private. Parks tend to be lower quality, but there are exceptions. Instead, what you'll find is that it tends to depend on the age of the building. There are seem to be very few examples of low-quality restrooms built in Japan in the last 10-15 years, regardless of who paid for the building.

XorNot 12y ago

It utterly hadn't occurred to me that there'd actually be a cultural issue on something like this. It's an incredibly alien concept.

sixQuarks 12y ago
yeah, it's pretty funny when the girl was quoted pointing at the forest "It's only natural to go there". She does have a point though. Problem is, it's not really "natural" to have 7 billion people roaming the earth, thus you can't just use your natural instincts about everything.
parennoob 12y ago
It's not really a cultural issue. [1] If you are particularly puzzled, go to a campsite with vault toilets and stay there for 6 weeks. Afterwards, you will probably think going in the open is way better too. -- [1] Well, not primarily anyway -- though I suspect poop is actually considered more disgusting in Indian culture than Western culture, which leads to the "dump it and get the hell away" mentality, which reinforces the lack of use of these toilets.

refurb 12y ago

I always found the idea that India has a sanitation problem because it's too much money to build a proper one confusing. I mean, most Western nations built their sewer system when they were much poorer than India. It now seems like they don't have proper sewer systems because there just isn't the demand.

orky56 12y ago
Actually India is credited with developing some of the first sewer systems and first flush toilets. Unfortunately, many things between then and now have fundamentally changed. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanitation_of_the_Indus_Valley_Civilization http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sanitation_of_the_Indus_Valley_...)
- jessaustin 12y ago
  Crediting "India" for the practices of people who lived in the same physical location thousands of years ago seems like a stretch. You might as well credit the English for building Stonehenge, or me for hunting bison with a wood-and-stone spear.
fleitz 12y ago
Rural india is much different than urban india. Even in wester nations, many rural areas don't have sewer systems, they have septic tanks.

QuantumChaos 12y ago

I hope they can figure this issue out. As a westerner who never considered not using a toilet, I'm having trouble understanding the pros and cons of using toilets at all. What happens if a person defecates in the fields? Does this spread bacteria to other people living nearby, or people who eat crops grown in those fields? What are the beneficiaries of me using a toilet instead of the fields? My family? The people living nearby? Hopefully providing accurate information on these matters will help villagers make better choices.

jessaustin 12y ago
...never considered not using a toilet... I grew up in and have lived for long stretches in rural areas, so this seems very strange to admit. Have you never spent time in the wilderness? As for your questions, I'd say that a field where food is grown is among the worst places in which to defecate.
- bane 12y ago
  > I'd say that a field where food is grown is among the worst places in which to defecate. It wasn't all that uncommon (and may still be in some places) for people to use a removable catch in their outhouses so they can remove it and use it for fertilizer. I don't know about India, but I've seen traditional systems like this in various parts of Asia. I wouldn't recommend it today now that we know about germs and things. But I wouldn't be surprised at all if people defecated in their crop fields with some regularity since it's good for the plants.
  - jessaustin 12y ago
    My experience in gardening leads me to believe that "fresh" manure is actually not that great for plants. However, pile it up and let it stew for a year or two and you're left with good fertilizer. TBH, I've only used livestock manure for gardens, so perhaps human manure is different, but I rather doubt it.
ChrisNorstrom 12y ago
You do have a point. As long as they bury it a foot or so underground it's actually quite natural. Otherwise: 1) It builds up over time. Is easy to step on and cultivates bacteria and disease. 2) It runs off into streams, lakes, crop fields, water supplies. (normally, all animal feces does this. It increases the bacteria rate in lakes and streams by tiny amounts. But when humans do it en mass it creates problems.)

suprgeek 12y ago

Two states in particular of India, Uttar Pradesh (U.P) & Bihar are the worst affected by this phenomenon. Both have very large populations and deeply entrenched caste systems that are at the root of a lot of this non-sense. The long term solution unfortunately is only time - as the older, slower to change people die off, the newer kids start to assert them selves. Now the society needs to pour in resources for two things and two things mainly - Education - Teach people about Germ theory, Viruses, etc (among other things) every five year old should be screaming about this stuff. Women's empowerment - Get more women to participate in decision making (via tax incentives etc) and get them to drive the sanitation effort.

fiatmoney 12y ago
"deeply entrenched caste systems that are at the root of a lot of this non-sense" Could you explain?
- michaelbuddy 12y ago
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caste_system_in_India http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caste_system_in_India
  - dominotw 12y ago
    Thats not what he asking. He is asking how caste system relates to toilet issue.
    - lobotryas 12y ago
      FTA: >Only dalits, the lowest Hindu caste, should be exposed to excrement in a closed space, “or city-dwellers who don’t have space to go in the open,” said Sunita, who uses one name, as she washed clothes next to the concrete latrine. “Feces don’t belong under the same roof as where we eat and sleep.”
    - kamaal 12y ago
      Oh, there is some thousands of years of historical perspective behind that. Historically lower castes in India were supposed to be the people responsible for cleaning, janitorial work etc. That's more like putting it mildly, they were sort of forced generations after generations to do absolutely despicable stuff like scavenging human waste. Cleaning streets, gutters etc. What's more you are forbidden to marry outside your caste, and there was a another social disease called untouchability- which was basically you can't share the same space with the lower castes. Like religious places etc. There are some extreme instances where people weren't even allowed to walk on the same roads. They were barred from education, or any other work of dignity. In short the worst kind of jobs were left for the lower caste. And people expect the same to continue, now as well!

hingisundhorsa 12y ago

I don't know much about the actual conditions in North India. But this article contains some markers that are at best suggestive of exaggeration, at worst maybe falsification. Eg, high levels of descriptive details that don't seem to be relevant and also don't mesh together: 1. Sunita’s family in the north Indian village of Mukimpur 2. When nature calls, the 26-year-old single mother and her four children head toward the jungle next to their farm of red and pink roses, to a field of tall grass, flecked with petals, where the 7,000 people of her village go to defecate and exchange gossip. 7000 people is a lot of people. Especially for a village. A quick check shows Mukimpur in the 2011 census only has a population of either 42 or 151. http://ourhero.in/population/villages/mukimpur-111460 http://ourhero.in/population/villages/mukimpur-111460 http://www.populationofindia.co.in/uttar-pradesh/muzaffarnagar/jansath/.mukimpur http://www.populationofindia.co.in/uttar-pradesh/muzaffarnag... Taking a look in Maps: https://maps.google.com.my/maps?q=Mukimpur,+Uttar+Pradesh,+India&hl=en&ll=28.361038,77.918419&spn=0.004522,0.008256&sll=3.232214,101.380968&sspn=2.626814,4.22699&oq=mukimpur&hnear=Mukimpur,+Bulandshahar,+Uttar+Pradesh,+India&t=h&z=18&lci=com.panoramio.all https://maps.google.com.my/maps?q=Mukimpur,+Uttar+Pradesh,+I... Seems like there's maybe 100 structures there max, even if all were houses, how do you get 7000 people? There definitely maybe a toilet problem, but I doubt this article is shedding light on the cause.

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- kaptain 12y ago
  Just western media? I myself am quite ignorant of media from other places in the world. In your experience is there a type of media that is more truthful in the way it describes situations? From my perspective, the emphasis isn't on the details of the description. Rather, the core of the article is really an account of the problem of sanitation. India has so many people that I just glossed over the number of people in the village. Thus this possible discrepancy didn't bother me.
  - deleted 12y ago
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chime 12y ago

This isn't an issue of using clean toilets with plumbing vs. open fields. This is using a porcelain port-a-potty with no plumbing vs. open fields. Plumbing is the real issue, not the actual toilets.

xenadu02 12y ago
Bingo! The real problem in these areas is the lack of running water. Without the water, you can't flush the stuff away into a sewer or septic system.

parennoob 12y ago

[Indian here, who has some experience using these toilets.] I am not surprised by this, and could have seen it coming a mile away. This is primarily a user experience problem. Warning: graphic discussions of poop-related engineering problems ahead. "With little access to running water, government latrines typically consist of a large, concrete septic tank with a ceramic squat-toilet on top, enclosed by a cement or brick cubicle with a narrow door." This is essentially the same as the vault toilets that you find at campsites in the US. I have used them when in a village, and the smell inside is horrible. It's worse in India than US campsites, because the toilets are squatting ones, and your nose is closer to the septic tank. There are a ton of flies buzzing around all the time. Also, the warm weather makes the stuff in the septic tank decompose faster. Compared to this, I would prefer "going" in the open field any day, which is exactly what the woman they quoted says. Some solutions to this are: 1) Get more ventilation in the toilets. Possibly a solar-powered exhaust fan. This will reduce the smell. 2) Have some sort of smell-blocking chemical barrier between the septic tank and the toilet hole, like they have in airline toilets. This will reduce the smell even further. 3) As they mentioned, most toilets don't have running water. Most people bring a little bucket of water with them to wash up after the act. Have some sort of spraying system that you can load that water into, and wash up. Or try your best to get running water or a rainwater catchment tank providing water to such a system. If I had any leverage at all with the officials building these, I would strongly recommend the solutions above. Just building a toilet is not a panacea, you also have to make them so that people strongly prefer them to existing practices.

ChrisNorstrom 12y ago
Come to think of it, is a "feces graveyard" a much better solution? As long as they bury feces it a foot or so underground it shouldn't be a problem and sounds a lot more hygienic than the smelly septic tank holes. As long as they mark where feces are buried they can avoid digging them up and let them naturally compost.
- parennoob 12y ago
  Possibly, something like an elevated platform above a large area might be a better solution for smaller villages. For larger villages, I think you might get into cost-benefit tradeoffs, because the pit might need to be large, and some sort of mechanical system to turn the earth might be required to encourage composting.

bruceb 12y ago

Not surprising. Even in places with running water and electricity the toilets can be horrible. The reason the toilet cleaning people are shunned is because they are not given the right tools and protection. When we clean a toilet in the US we have plastic gloves, toilet bowl cleaning solution, disposable cleaning pad and/or a brush meant for cleaning toilets. Often a worker cleaning that in India doesn't have that. Hence only the lowly person does the cleaning and is looked as doing something icky. Giving toilet and bathroom cleaners a uniform and the proper tools and protections might be a good places to spend money to ensure better toilets. This is my total pop psych opinion after visiting lots of Indian toilets and talking with different people about why toilets in India are so bad.

dominotw 12y ago

WARNING: If you are an Indian, do not read the comments on that article.

avighnay 12y ago

What we end up doing is comparing the apples of present day hygiene etiquette to the oranges of what is remnant of a hygiene system that has worked quite well in its hey days. What is this system is remnant of is; A very sound personal hygiene system followed for centuries, bathing two times a day, washing ones feet before entering a house, not wearing footwear inside one's house, cremating the dead outside the boundaries of the village, designated community space outside the village for natures call, two separate ponds in every village one for bathing (with separate designated bathing steps for women and men) and the other for washing clothes and a special pond inside every village temple for ritual bathing. Population has made the existence of this system impractical but that does not mean people will just change overnight relatively speaking. In fact, up till a few generations back, most Indians would be aghast at the unhygienic notion that one can have a toilet inside one's home! For eg. a reverse bias is, even today a rustic villager in the remotest part of rural India would cringe when he/she hears that the people in the west just wipe but not wash after they do their job (most Indians, even the ones in the west now, secretly do cringe at this idea in fact). Why this notional difference? It could be the relative availability of water, the extremes of weather (cannot wash in icy cold water can you?) and such differences that existed in one's past which moulds one's personal hygiene etiquette.

parennoob 12y ago
Spot on. Your comment hits the other, psychological aspect of the this problem (look at mine for the practical aspect). Correct your formatting a bit though, "What this system is remnant of" is cut off and confusing, "eg." should be "e.g." (for 'example gratia'), etc.
jamesaguilar 12y ago
I can understand the cringe-inducing nature of wiping, but it doesn't actually have negative health consequences. Thus, it is not really comparable.
kamaal 12y ago
>>In fact, up till a few generations back, most Indians would be aghast at the unhygienic notion that one can have a toilet inside one's home! Up till a few generations back, some one's home was clean because some lower class guys were cleaning up while the higher class guy enjoyed their hygiene. Or in other words this was at the expense of other fellow human beings who did all the clean up while one could brag about ancient methods of hygiene. No civilized society would accept such a classification of people in the modern times. So a person is expected to clean their own mess. You are right when you say >>What we end up doing is comparing the apples of present day hygiene etiquette to the oranges of what is remnant of a hygiene system that has worked quite well in its hey days.

PhantomGremlin 12y ago

Unfortunately, thanks to globalization, India's health problems become our health problems. A recent NY Times article [1] said: Medicines Made in India Set Off Safety Worries ... India’s pharmaceutical industry supplies 40 percent of over-the-counter and generic prescription drugs consumed in the United States BTW we're even more dependent on China. The same article goes on to say: The crucial ingredients for nearly all antibiotics, steroids and many other lifesaving drugs are now made exclusively in China. Edit: I may not have made my point clear. What I'm referring to is a cultural issue. What I would consider to be the "casual" attitude in large parts of India toward sanitation means they might not be as conscientious in adhering to proper manufacturing safety procedures as I would like. The NY Times also ran a recent article on poor sanitation in India. [2] [1] http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/15/world/asia/medicines-made-in-india-set-off-safety-worries.html http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/15/world/asia/medicines-made-... [2] http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/15/world/asia/poor-sanitation-in-india-may-afflict-well-fed-children-with-malnutrition.html http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/15/world/asia/poor-sanitation...

jamesaguilar 12y ago
How is this in any way related to sanitation problems in Indian villages?
- PhantomGremlin 12y ago
  If workers at pharmaceutical plants are going home every day to "casual" attitudes about sanitation, they are much more likely to have these same "casual" attitudes at work. If they're not worried about things like "night soil", they probably aren't worried about contamination at work, either. It's easy to have problems making pharmaceuticals. It's bad enough in the USA, I'm sure its worse in third world countries. E.g. here's something that an FDA report said [1]: Microbial contamination is a risk to biologic product quality and safety. The cost of inadequate microbial control in biologic product manufacture is enormous as facilities or bioreactor production trains may have to be shut down for lengthy periods of time ... The recent cases of bacterial contamination of biologic products suggest that preventative maintenance plans ... need further attention. Sorry, I know this is a horrible stereotype. But what happened to the "good old days" when the Swiss made our medicine? [1] http://www.fda.gov/downloads/AboutFDA/CentersOffices/CDER/UCM275353.pdf http://www.fda.gov/downloads/AboutFDA/CentersOffices/CDER/UC...

kolev 12y ago

Is there any proof that diarrhea is due to the lack of toilets? Although septic toilet is still a toilet, I don't think it's orders of magnitude more hygienic solution for a densely populated area. It requires maintenance and cleaning, and in an area with heavy rains, it could be a disaster (according the article, it's concrete one that can easily overflow). I think they should address the running water and soap before tackling the toilet issue!

known 12y ago

People in India hate their Neighbourhood due to http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/16/opinion/sunday/caste-is-not-past.html http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/16/opinion/sunday/caste-is-no... and http://www.rediff.com/news/slide-show/slide-show-1-is-india-most-racist-country-in-the-world-/20131017.htm http://www.rediff.com/news/slide-show/slide-show-1-is-india-...

ender89 12y ago

... I mean, if you showed me a dingy outhouse on one hand and a serene field on the other, I can kind of see the appeal. Until you realize that the serene field is full of other people's poop anyway.