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Sanitation and Health Rights in India (YC W16 Nonprofit)

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11–20 of 42 posts

Re: Sanitation and Health Rights in India (YC W16 Nonprofit)

#11
post #6

Sanitation is the proverbial uphill battle in India. West and affluent Indians often do not understand the full extent of issues here. Some 15 years ago we built 5 toilets (along with flush) for a community of sheep shepherds deep into the jungles of Maharashtra-India. 6 years later when we visited them again it was embarrassing to see that they were using the toilets as shelter for their sheep and still defecating i…

Is that link your work? Do you have more about what you do?

No that is not the link to my work. The work I referred to was the work by a local Temple and I was a 15 year old volunteer who laid bricks for toilets. Never had the big picture that time.

Re: Sanitation and Health Rights in India (YC W16 Nonprofit)

#12
post #7

This is such an incredibly sad Country. My wife is Indian, from Noida, we went there two years ago. I saw much of Delhi. The amount of pollution, poverty, filth, homelessness including children that are begging in the streets hooked on who knows what drugs and being molested and raped is staggering. I remember one little girl maybe 10 that came up to my wife and I because she saw my wife using a small travel bottle o…

I am Indian. I agree with everything you said, fairly accurate analysis of the situation.

Re: Sanitation and Health Rights in India (YC W16 Nonprofit)

#14
post #7

This is such an incredibly sad Country. My wife is Indian, from Noida, we went there two years ago. I saw much of Delhi. The amount of pollution, poverty, filth, homelessness including children that are begging in the streets hooked on who knows what drugs and being molested and raped is staggering. I remember one little girl maybe 10 that came up to my wife and I because she saw my wife using a small travel bottle o…

So you judged a whole country after visiting a single city?

>one step away from Taliban

Really? I mean, really?

I would expect this kind of bullshit in maybe r/worldnews but not in HN.

Re: Sanitation and Health Rights in India (YC W16 Nonprofit)

#15
post #6

Sanitation is the proverbial uphill battle in India. West and affluent Indians often do not understand the full extent of issues here. Some 15 years ago we built 5 toilets (along with flush) for a community of sheep shepherds deep into the jungles of Maharashtra-India. 6 years later when we visited them again it was embarrassing to see that they were using the toilets as shelter for their sheep and still defecating i…

I definitely agree that the community is integral in implementing long-term solutions. We believe that access to toilets is a right, and so our mission is to fight alongside these communities to realize access to this sanitation infrastructure. Community input starts with identifying the right location to put the facility (we focus on rural areas where the space is not an issue). Community members petition to get Indian government land handed over for us to build on, and local community members are the folks hired to run the facilities.

Re: Sanitation and Health Rights in India (YC W16 Nonprofit)

#16
post #5

This is great. Sometimes the problems of open defecation are more complex than just a lack of toilets. Here's a short article that mentions some of these: http://www.irinnews.org/report/102414/when-shit-happens

Definitely agree! As the article mentions, simply tracking the number of toilets built is not enough. We track daily toilet users at each site and couple access to toilets with access to safe drinking water because our goal is to see long-term improved health outcomes!

Re: Sanitation and Health Rights in India (YC W16 Nonprofit)

#17
post #2

This is a wonderful idea, but sanitation and health rights goes hand-in-hand with civic duty to where one lives and works. It's not just the responsibility of governments to keep an environment safe and clean. Citizens must do their part, such as minimize their ecological footprint, pick up litter in their communities, be a good neighbour and so on. A sense of civic duty seems to be amiss nowadays. Just look at the s…

We also value the civic engagement component of our work! We've seen the members of the communities where we work to be highly motivated to advocate for themselves to get their local representatives to build the toilets as promised in Swachh Bharat.

Re: Sanitation and Health Rights in India (YC W16 Nonprofit)

#19
post #18

Hi there! I'm Joan, one of the Directors at SHRI. Happy to talk more about sanitation or answer questions about our work!

I can't get your website to open up. Shows up completely blank

Sorry to hear that! The issue was just brought to our attention, and we're working on the fix. Your browser is probably set to block cookies by default. Turning that off should allow it to load.

Re: Sanitation and Health Rights in India (YC W16 Nonprofit)

#20
post #7

This is such an incredibly sad Country. My wife is Indian, from Noida, we went there two years ago. I saw much of Delhi. The amount of pollution, poverty, filth, homelessness including children that are begging in the streets hooked on who knows what drugs and being molested and raped is staggering. I remember one little girl maybe 10 that came up to my wife and I because she saw my wife using a small travel bottle o…

I agree with some of the points you made. But saying that indian government has completely failed and it was better under British rule is not completely correct.

Some of the achievement of independent India are

1) Fully functional democracy: India is perhaps the only country which is able to avoid a strong dictator among all its colonized peer. We provided universal suffrage from day one. Indian democracy is not perfect but we regularly topple corrupt or inefficient government without bloodshed or civil war. Considering the diversity in culture and not so educated population this is a great achievement

2) Creating a country out of diversity: During Indian independence Churchill said India will soon be broken down into pieces. Many others believed the same as difference between different part of India is far greater than europe. Still we survived any major secession effort and currently very few Indian want to be a independent nation. We have 14 major languages. Two of our south asian neighbours went to civil war just because of two major language could not coexist. We have the 2nd largest population of muslim living peacefully with about a billion Hindu population without going through radicalization. In retrospect this unity in diversity will be biggest achievement of Independent India

3) Food self sufficiency: Through out British rule famine was a part and parcel of our life. Just in Bengal famine in 1943 about 3-4 million people were killed. If you consider the magnitude it can only be compared to holocaust. Even in 1950s and 60s we had literally beg USA or USSR for food grains. Currently we are completely self sufficient in terms of food which is a big achievement considering the need for feeding more than a billion mouth

5) Strong Institutions: Independent India has created very strong Institution including a fair Judiciary system, Monetary Institute(RBI, SBI), Educational Institutes (IIT,IIM,AIIMS) or research institutes(ISRO). Benefits of these institutes can be felt even in silicon valley. Also because of the achievement of students from these institutes abroad, India could create a strong software and service industry

6) Forming the base of strong economy: Because of all the above points (and many other) currently India is considered as the fastest growing major economy. Its current economic situation is somehow similar to China in 2001. As we embraced market economy 15 years after china I think it is in a comparable situation. Next 20 years of growth of above 6% can do wonders to infrastructure as we have seen in China.

People always compare India with China and come to the conclusion that it is a failed state. But in my opinion apart from China and South Korea ( I am excluding city states) India have done fairly well after independence in comparison to other colonial countries, and is poised to progress in much faster pace. My only regret is that we should have embraced market economy 20 years before. But still saying Indian government has completely failed in not entirely correct

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