India is drowning in its own excreta
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India is drowning in its own excreta
1–10 of 137 posts
Re: India is drowning in its own excreta
#2After reading this, it makes me want to hug my toilet...
Re: India is drowning in its own excreta
#3The history of civilization is full of inventive people finding ways to make life better, and then doing so. Why does this not happen in these poverty stricken areas? Is it because anyone intelligent enough to do something about it leaves?
They don't have to jump straight to modern plumbing to have their lives improved.
Re: India is drowning in its own excreta
#4Having been to India quite recently (and being Indian), I talked to a lot of family members there about this issue, among others, as I saw it happen time and again. One of the things that really frustrated me was the pure lack of accountability in general. I said 'among others' earlier because I am also referring to environment issues such as littering and pollution. The people there aren't dumb--they know all of these actions have harmful and negative effects on others' help and the general environment, but they would rather not care than care for the most part. Herein lies the fundamental problem...if you would rather not care, well there's no solution to that. I am originally from Northern India but on my most recent visit, we went to Mumbai. If the ocean wasn't brown and there was less pollution, it would hands-down be one of the most beautiful cities in the world. But no one there seems to look at what could be but rather what it is and accept it.
So rather than spreading knowledge about these issues (which, don't get me wrong, is also good), there has to be an attitude change. You can't blame the government and I never like doing that, but it would be wonderful if the government would get involved in preventing these environmental/health jeopardizing actions. The problem with this, of course, that the country is so populated that it is extremely hard to make this drastic of an imposition and follow through with it.
Re: India is drowning in its own excreta
#5Having been to India quite recently (and being Indian), I talked to a lot of family members there about this issue, among others, as I saw it happen time and again. One of the things that really frustrated me was the pure lack of accountability in general. I said 'among others' earlier because I am also referring to environment issues such as littering and pollution. The people there aren't dumb--they know all of the…
> The people there aren't dumb--they know all of these actions have harmful and negative effects on others' help and the general environment, but they would rather not care than care for the most part.
Well that's just disgusting. I don't think you could pay me enough money to step foot in that country.
Re: India is drowning in its own excreta
#6India isn't alone. Dubai is having a massive problem with sewage and in the US there are a lot of communities that have septic tanks which, when they fail, can cause ground water pollution. Even in St. Louis, Missouri, USA we still have overflows in which the sewer system excess gets purged into streams and rivers when it becomes too much to handle for the sewer system. A lot of US cities have this problem.
And this is in 2013. We have a robot on Mars, people in space, and flags on the moon.
The problem is that our only current solution is an extremely expensive underground sewage system with thousands of miles of pipes, treatment plants, and storage containers which take a long time to build and are expensive to maintain and replace. That's not something realistic for fast growing communities or rising countries. There's really no cheaper better alternative.
Is this an industry ripe for disruption. Dare anyone challange the sewer/septic tank gods?
Re: India is drowning in its own excreta
#7Composting toilets are the future.
Re: India is drowning in its own excreta
#8no mention of india spending $1 trillion on infrastructure over 2013 - 2018.
Re: India is drowning in its own excreta
#9Having been to India quite recently (and being Indian), I talked to a lot of family members there about this issue, among others, as I saw it happen time and again. One of the things that really frustrated me was the pure lack of accountability in general. I said 'among others' earlier because I am also referring to environment issues such as littering and pollution. The people there aren't dumb--they know all of the…
> The people there aren't dumb--they know all of these actions have harmful and negative effects on others' help and the general environment, but they would rather not care than care for the most part. Well that's just disgusting. I don't think you could pay me enough money to step foot in that country.
That is what happens when a plethora of cultures have migrated to a region, each culture growing it's own little bubble. India has been a recipient of migrants from Central Asia, North Asia and Europe over the last two thousand years. India to it's smallest unit is a hive of ghettos, each ghetto not caring about the other one, while striving in the futile exercise of ensuring it's own survival. People don't care about cleanliness or have general civic sense because they don't see themselves as one community. The lack of the sense of "India" is appalling. We have Kashmiris, Biharis, Marathis, Gujaratis. Oriyas, Nagas, Tamils, Other South Indians, Bhaiyyas(from Uttar Pradesh), Punjabis and a thousand of other sub-cultures. India has not had Independence long enough to have that sense spread in it's massive population.
From the heights of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pataliputra, and later http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vijayanagara_Empire, India has been seizing to become a more "me and my tribe first" civilization due to the always constant influx of foreigners looking to settle. In 2013, it's just, "me and my 1000 square feet flat first".
Indians are in for a massive shock when they realize they can't keep themselves prosperous for long without thinking of the community first. The "Red Revolution"(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naxalite) and the massive protests in the big cities are indications of a society in great distress. It's going to implode. In any case, it's going to get much worse before it get's any better.
The 10th century chronicler, observed this about India: "The Hindus believe that there is no country but theirs, no nation like theirs, no kings like theirs, no religion like theirs, no science like theirs.They are haughty, foolishly vain, self-conceited, and stolid. They are by nature niggardly in communicating that which they know, and they take the greatest possible care to withhold it from men of another caste among their own people, still much more, of course, from any foreigner ... Their haughtiness is such that, if you tell them of any science or scholar in Khorasan and Persis, they will think you to be both an ignoramus and a liar. If they traveled and mixed with other nations, they would soon change their mind, for their ancestors were not as narrow-minded as the present generation is." --http://www.shunya.net/Text/Blog/AlBeruniIndia.htm
Re: India is drowning in its own excreta
#10What most people do not realize is this: Mumbai also has the most expensive house in the world - thats right, in the world:
http://statspotting.com/the-most-expensive-home-in-the-world...