Toilet Talk
Mr. Gates, probably the most identifiable business leader of 21st century comes with jar of human shit and triggers the world. World notices. When Prime Minister of the largest democracy talks about it. World notices.
And when Matt Damon says…
you got one, I got one…and that’s the reason to celebrate…..World notices.
Indian recently hosted two big events within span of eight weeks- Mahatma Gandhi International Sanitation Convention & World Toilet Day Summit, which have seen participation of representatives from almost all countries of the world- either government delegation, civil society representatives, or corporations.
Bollywood stars, politicians, musicians, and literally everyone talks about toilet. Toilet talk has never been such sexy. Swachh Bharat Mission has been game changer for the world. Toilet is talked in the drawing room, theatre, newspapers, internet and every space possible.
Rims of pages written over toilets- good, bad, ugly. One proposes a number, another contests the number, one proposes toilet being used & other contests those being used for every other purpose other than what they were meant for. Politics divide and toilet unites.
In my professional career, the last time something has gained such space was HIV. Though it was pre-social media days & world was not this connected.
Claims, counter claims, and yet another claim have resurrected issues of toilet in the mainstream. Not every day, it happens that online newspapers/website run series to cover world toilet day. And specially those who were known to strongly pursue views critical of the government of the day. It doesn’t happen every day that government take note of a random report claiming its failure to stop open defecation.
I had been talking to so many practitioner, people on the ground, beneficiaries, and they had thrown interesting insights…that got me thinking.
My Toilet Musing
INR 12,000 toilet answer to all
This sounds almost like street market selling - “herak mal” at certain amount. The positioning of campaign has been such that it sounds like. Toilet is the answer to all issues at hand. Conversations with people helped me to find the following.
- Women’s empowerment.
- Employment
- Health/child survival
- New found meaningful engagement for youths and people in the villages
- Many more…fertilizer, better crop yield, environmental protection
Baseline number
Talking to veterans helped coming to the conclusion that India has not reached this toilet coverage for the first time. Little bit of data digging thrown of interesting number given by the Ministry itself.
In 2010-11, India has reported coverage of 75%. Then the coverage percentage reported to be 38.70% (Oct 2, 2014) which stands to 96.33% as of today. Many people have expressed skepticism over the coverage with history of campaign, processes, and curious case of baseline.
 |
| Toilet Coverage in 2010-2011 |
After census of 2011, the Ministry went back to look into the reported coverage, NSSO survey data, and threw interesting correctional factors that many fever would have to put as we would be reaching to census 2021.
· Not sure, if we are prepared for 35% downward correction. Downward correction reported then was as high as more than 50% in few states. In fact, sample survey had also thrown higher coverage number than census one, which was done two years later.
· Some states were smarter in data management than others then. And perhaps we are staring at the similar situation.
· Going by the latest contested figure of CAG audit in Gujrat suggested 30% deficit recently.
NSSO 2008-09
|
Census 2011
|
TSC 2010-11
|
NSSO minus Census
|
Census 2011 minus TSC
| |
MADHYA Pradesh
|
14.7
|
13.6
|
70.91
|
1.1
|
57.31
|
TAMIL Nadu
|
26.5
|
26.7
|
79.87
|
-0.2
|
53.17
|
UTTAR Pradesh
|
46.5
|
22.9
|
74.61
|
23.6
|
51.71
|
GUJARAT
|
32.7
|
34.2
|
81.74
|
-1.5
|
47.54
|
D& N Haveli
|
46.8
|
29.3
|
70.06
|
17.5
|
40.76
|
CHHATTISGARH
|
17.7
|
14.8
|
54.05
|
2.9
|
39.25
|
Andhra Pradesh
|
35.7
|
34.9
|
71.01
|
0.8
|
36.11
|
JHARKHAND
|
15.9
|
8.3
|
44.03
|
7.6
|
35.73
|
ORISSA
|
11.8
|
15.3
|
50.71
|
-3.5
|
35.41
|
RAJASTHAN
|
17.9
|
20.1
|
54.61
|
-2.2
|
34.51
|
HARYANA
|
54.7
|
57.7
|
91.8
|
-3
|
34.1
|
HIMACHAL Pradesh
|
53.5
|
67.5
|
100
|
-14
|
32.5
|
KARNATAKA
|
24.8
|
31.9
|
63.87
|
-7.1
|
31.97
|
WEST Bengal
|
58.3
|
48.7
|
76
|
9.6
|
27.3
|
MAHARASHTRA
|
39.3
|
44.2
|
70.29
|
-4.9
|
26.09
|
All India
|
34.8
|
32.7
|
68.41
|
2.1
|
35.71
|
That gets me doing a lazy internet research to hit this interesting definition which wiki says used in Pharmacology. It defines
"Baseline describes a person's state of mind or being with the absence of drugs. For example, after an LSD trip, baseline would be the point where the user is completely under control and no longer experiences any effects."
Looks like this aptly describe, why we are more comfortable at baseline.
People are using toilets
I asked people, what was good about this phase of sanitation campaign. People had very interesting answers from plain cynicism to more nuanced one. I am summarizing below.
- In the earlier version, toilets were built of the sizes where human could not sit. This phase, super structure has dimension of full human size and hence likelihood of use.
- From tea sellers to prime minister everyone was talking about it, tweeting about it, and mostly importantly a certain degree of acceptance of issues came. Campaign had better community focus.
- District Magistrate has never been seen walking on the street deep in the village at 5 AM in the morning.
In general people had opinion that toilets are being used. But, every one said…how a battle worth fighting open defecation free communities were merely reduced to saturating baseline. Baseline interestingly also given interesting tool to defend many of the shortcomings. This is classical case of how a good concept when applied at scale opens up for criticism.
Peddling many a cliché
While there has been remarkable community engagement in the campaign. The campaign has also seen many a cliché being peddled. Women selling their ornaments, a poor family selling their goat/livestock, family begged for alms to build etc. Every village/district and all involved wanted to replicate it. Altruism of poor was peddled in many forms. Some places reported…..compression of demands for incentive which turn out compression of supply itself and resulted into poor construction etc.
Many of those are called out. Govt. issued advisory. But, guess community was hugely romanced in the campaign, which otherwise always had been in development sector. I am yet to find some coming to community in rich neighbourhood for financial contribution or at least a commitment to walk every one in the park before being build. But, this was there 12,000 incentive to toilet to a poor households. Before you jump into per capita cost or something….consider the following.
- A typical toilet are supposed to be used by 5-6 members so that puts incentive 2,000 per capita.
- And government does have maintenance money annually given for park etc. and for toilet its life time one time incentive.
Therefore, better instrument of community engagement could be tried out rather than the cliché of altruism, sacrifice,….to the negative ones---coercion, invasive nudging etc.
https://thewire.in/rights/grit-on-world-toilet-day-a-look-at-the-wires-coverage-of-sanitation
