The Other Thakur Ka Kuan

The Parliamentary question on gender break-up of open defecation & Premchand’s short story.

WrittenBy:Anand Vardhan
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“How many women in India defecate in the open?”

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– A question posed to Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh by two MPs in the monsoon session of Parliament

The question is about the gender break-up of open defecation in India, and is a valid one. But, before knowing the fate of this question, let me introduce another question, specific to the urban space: has the toilet in urban middle class (and the urban rich) households become the Thakur Ka Kuan (Thakur’s Well) of our times – signalling a class system of human waste in the cities? Are we witnessing urban avatars of this metaphor of untouchability – a metaphor which owes its origin to Premchand’s memorable description of the dehumanising caste divide of a feudal society in his short story, Thakur Ka Kuan.

In Indian cities, a number of men, women and children put faded plastic cola bottles and polythene bags to a different use at the crack of the dawn. With the “privacy” of their act at your mercy, they rush to some spots that are still out of bounds to real estate hawks. The collective act has to be completed before the cities of a liberalising India and homes with plush toilets wake up to do business. In opening up economies, open defecation has a time and place allotted to it!

Living on the margins of existence, for most of the slum-dwelling population of the cities, defecating in the open is one of those “givens” of daily negotiations with life. Ironically, similar is the fate of the poor who might be serving in houses with toilets, often more than one. Some of these bottle/polythene bag-carrying morning “walkers” might be working as full time maids/servants. But, face it for a fact – toilets in the homes of the urban rich or even middle class have become such a site of class exclusivity (almost to a degree of being a fetish) that any downmarket visitor invites the frowns and tongue-lashing of the toilet-conscious class, with fingers firmly on their noses.

It’s a strictly no-entry zone for servants and the underclass. Tresspassers are dealt with the class penal code of human waste disposal and sanitation hierarchy. And of course, menial people can work round the clock in the house and even sleep in a corner, but must go to open spaces to answer nature’s call. The unwritten law has a terror to it, and any act of defiance (even in an “emergency”) carries that dehumanising element – the element of fear. It’s this haunting thing that chased Gangi when she feared being caught for infringing – drawing clean water from the “exclusive” Thakur’s well for chronically ill Jokhu. The horror has found brilliant expression in Premchand’s short story, just listen to this narration

Now, returning to the question posed to Jairam Ramesh. The gender profile of the people defecating in the open is important because of two reasons. First, when a woman is forced (with no option left) to defecate in the open, it is a sign of the breakdown or even non-availability of the minimum civic structure that human development can expect from a society. It is that threshold. The number of such women could reveal the magnitude of this “big elephant in the room” that we have been ignoring for too long. It’s no longer only a failure, it’s a crime. The statistics on this could give us a numerical measure of the severity of this crime and the hapless victims.

Second, a particular stand in rural as well as urban crime patterns of India has also suggested that going out for defecating has left many women vulnerable to sexual assaults. It’s not rare to find newspaper reports about women being assaulted when they are on their way to attend nature’s call. In cities, such women risk a lot when they step out of their jhuggis for defecating in the open. Knowing the number of women practising open defecation could be an important input for studying the empirical connect between the lack of toilet facilities in poor settlements and a particular pattern of sexual assault. Such sociological insight could be effective in putting in perspective an infrastructural crisis concerning human development and the challenge of effective policing which affects day-to-day law and order.

So, did the Ministry have gender data about open defecation? No. A report published in Business Standard (August 28, 2012) says:

“He (Jairam Ramesh) admitted that his ministry did not maintain gender-wise data on the subject. What the ministry did not add in its written reply was that the numbers it had were based on the funds given to various state governments to build toilets under its sanitation programme – and individuals don’t figure in this data. By its own admission, the other, more reliable data is provided by the Census that goes by the number of households that have a toilet rather than a strict head, or butt, count.”

Though NGOs like Sulabh International and some government agencies such as DRDO have tried to come up with some innovative solutions, the enormous scale of the “sanitation deficit” requires such solutions to be tested for their large scale application and then effectively implemented. There is also the significant question of where this challenge figures in the policy priorities of the government. And dovetailed into this is another question: to what extent is the government ready to loosen its purse strings for building toilets? The government is giving mixed signals on this front. The Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) has developed low-cost toilets for 1,000 panchayats. The Rural Development Ministry raised the subsidies it gives for toilet construction to Rs 20,000 per unit from the earlier Rs 3,000. But, the dampener also came from this Ministry, as the Business Standard (August 27, 2012) reported: “To a question last week in the Lok Sabha whether it proposed to launch low-cost toilets, the minister denied having such plans. He added that there were no funds earmarked for developing low-cost toilets in the coming five-year Plan!”

In the sphere of urban governance, Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM) promises to provide toilet facilities (as part of basic urban services) to all, although the progress so far belies any such hopes, and it remains only that – a policy document.

The more people you see squatting with bottles and polythene bags besides them, the more apparent become the faultlines of the skewed model of economic growth. Denial of access to toilets is denial of human dignity. It’s a denial which discredits any claim to welfare state. And yes, it’s a denial which also implicates all the custodians of the heavily-guarded Thakur Ka Kuan of our times. Jokhus and Gangis of the world need their share of private space as much as they need clean water. The state has to create that for them. And yes, those guarded toilets have to be more welcoming. High time to accept the equality of human waste.

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