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posts about #haryana more →
Welcome To The Family, Son: Let's Talk Toilets
| posts about #haryana more → |
Welcome To The Family, Son: Let's Talk Toilets |
03/26/09
03/26/09
03/26/09
"Women who must go outside have to do so before sunrise or after nightfall so they can't be seen," said Bindeshwar Pathak, founder of Sulabh, which has built toilets for ten million Indians, and the recipient of this year's Stockholm Water Prize for developing ecofriendly and cheap lavatories to help to improve public health.
"We have more toilets, less shame among women and less disease," S.K.Monda, the official in charge of the programme, said.
I'm happy to see the issue getting attention. Having adequate resources to relieve oneself shouldn't be some kind of privilege, especially in developed areas.
Some upper-caste communities are not happy having lavatories in their homes because tradition dictates that such an arrangement is unclean.
That to me suggests a cultural belief among some that bodies are inherently unclean, perhaps created after decades of poor sanitation causing people to mistake bad waste disposal with the body itself being dangerous and unhealthy. Hopefully the improvements in sanitation and the increase in lavatories will help dispel that myth so more women can fulfill a basic need with dignity. It seems like the outdated beliefs of some communities could be causing health and social problems for these women.
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That said, I would think that maybe a free-standing thing would work well for this type of cultural attitude. If toilets + kitchens are unclean, I would think a toilet outside of the range of the kitchen would be okay.
03/26/09
On one hand the fact that westerners don't wash their nether regions with water every time after using the loo is always looked down upon.
On the other hand, even if you lived in a penthouse in Mumbai, you couldn't escape the sanitation issues the country has. Your eye-level view out of the penthouse would be of the beautiful skyline, but dare to look down and you will see a row of people squatting by the side of the road to do their business.
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2.6 billion people don't have anything like a toilet, and there's a bit of a shortage of celebrities who want to endorse that kind of development campaign...
[www.slate.com]
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This reminds me of when on our boat my dad would 'check the prop'.
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Well, maybe some places in Indiana...
03/26/09
It's amazing the things I take for granted, I guess. Imagine having to walk that far when you need to relieve yourself. Yikes.
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@crooooowww: And yeah, I read it as Indiana at first, too. Plus I just hearted you for your name. ("That's one o.")
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