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India is drowning in its own excreta

blogs.scientificamerican.com

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Re: India is drowning in its own excreta

#31

Post by kamaal »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #20

This sort of stuff makes me sad. But also strangely curious, since the suggestion is that these conditions are not survivable and yet people do survive. Are millions of people dying in Mumbai's slums and we're not hearing about it?

>>Are millions of people dying in Mumbai's slums and we're not hearing about it?

Its a very complicated issue.

Don't read too much into it. The fact that they live in slums has sometimes little correlation with their purchasing power or sometimes their financial status.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dharavi

This slum is a mini industry in itself having exports of over $650 million an year. Its possible many people living their have their own cars or even their own homes else where, which they have rented out for some monthly income.

Re: India is drowning in its own excreta

#32

Post by naanalla »

Indian here. Yes population is the biggest problem for us.Which naturally leads to many problems like this one.

* I agree with author this is absolutely true for slums like Mumbai. (But does not apply to whole India. Second tier urban areas scenario is not this bad ) * I agree that in most of rural area practice open defecation.

In general whey open defecation is in practiced,

* Since we have too many people even one bathroom in rural area per home is not sufficient(seriously) * Attitude of people towards cleanliness.

IS GOVT DOING SOMETHING FOR THIS?

* Yes lots of schemes have come(more than 10-20 years back and still continuing) in its slowly picking up. * The best scheme in my state(Karnataka)the govt is paying Rs 7000/- for each house to encourage them to construct toilet from 'gram panchayath'. * Thanks to media and celebs who are getting involved more these days.

Yes we have problem, we need to solve it.

Re: India is drowning in its own excreta

#33

Post by gnufied »

realrocker wrote: post #9
tomphoolery wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 abou…

Ha! I don't know why are you putting multi-ethnicity of India and people being apathetic towards general well being of society they live in. For last 200 years or so, survival has been single important goal of a middle/lower class Indian family. We have been plagued with unchecked population growth, famines, diseases & poverty. You read some of books (By Premchand, Tagore) and it used to be worse. Winter used to kill people in thousands and then famines. For a country which was dependent on Agriculture for such a long time, uncertain rain (and fight over who gets the canal water) used to spell disaster.

The problem is - even today for middle class families for whom survival is not a problem, haven't started caring about India they live in. We take our world for granted. :(

Re: India is drowning in its own excreta

#34

Post by sirwanqutbi »

mb_72 wrote: post #19
sirwanqutbi wrote: post #8

no mention of india spending $1 trillion on infrastructure over 2013 - 2018.

Spending money and seeing the results of spending the money are two different things entirely.

spending $1 trillion by 2018 is alot of money.. Dont you think articles like these are a precursor for the year 2018 ?

why are we hearing about indian sanitation and infrastructure NOW ?!

Re: India is drowning in its own excreta

#35

Post by ayushgta »

aashaykumar92 wrote: post #4

Having 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…

>You can't blame the government

Of course you can. And you should. This is all about terrible - and in many cases non-existent- governance. Widespread public problems this this cannot be solved by individual citizens or organizations. They need the power, money and resources of a government.

> the country is so populated that it is extremely hard to make this drastic of an imposition and follow through with it.

Population is oft quoted as the root cause of most problems in India. Perhaps it is. But population certainly doesn't explain why these problems don't get addressed or get the attention they deserve. That again is because the government of India does not effectively govern and manage the country. Elected officials rule over their subjects via institutions and political systems whose goals are more aligned with keeping them in power than the welfare of citizens. They lack a fundamental understanding that their job as an elected official is to govern and address issues of their citizens.

Problems like this can only be resolved with effective governance from which springs awareness, policies, infrastructure, funding and programs. But what happens when the people governing simply don’t care for their people?

Re: India is drowning in its own excreta

#36

Post by stickfigure »

realrocker wrote: post #9
tomphoolery wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 abou…

I am confused by why this would be relevant since generally water, sewage, and garbage collection is managed by local municipalities. At least that's the case in every country I've been to (which is many, although sadly India is not yet one of them).

Re: India is drowning in its own excreta

#38

Post by killerpopiller »

naanalla wrote: post #32

Indian here. Yes population is the biggest problem for us.Which naturally leads to many problems like this one. * I agree with author this is absolutely true for slums like Mumbai. (But does not apply to whole India. Second tier urban areas scenario is not this bad ) * I agree that in most of rural area practice open defecation. In general whey open defecation is in practiced, * Since we have too many people even one…

imho the overpopulation needs to be adressed the chinese way. I don't think that throwing tech at it will solve the problem. I remember vaguely, that one indian gov. wanted to sterilize slum inhabitants and wasn't reelected.

Re: India is drowning in its own excreta

#39

Post by realrocker »

Houshalter wrote: post #14
realrocker wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 abou…

The US is also mostly immigrants from different places. It is also more individualistic, but not in the sense you describe India. A lot of people know their families are mostly Irish/German/Whatever but for the most part no one cares. I'm not saying this because of "my country is better than yours" shit, but I'm legitimately interested in what causes the difference. Why do some groups assimilate into a common culture…

U.S has had the benefit of favorable geopolitics(a good read:http://www.stratfor.com/analysis/geopolitics-united-states-p...). A large living space and a fairly sturdy inland waterways.Historically, the pressure on natural resources has been mitigated by easier transport of goods and people(unlike India which doesn't have inland waterways). In last few decades U.S has also closed gates on immigrants for good. Though that has slowed down the process of ghettoization, eventually large swathes of U.S will convert into American-Hispanic and other similar sub-cultures. And then it's just "my tribe vs. your tribe". The U.S is at the beginning of the road, and in time when there is a greater pressure on resources, you are looking at yet another India within the next 100-150 years.

Let's just hope that it doesn't happen too soon and that human social mechanics today is advanced enough to handle another great civilization falling into chaos due to clash of cultures. The good news is that this time we have the Internet.

Re: India is drowning in its own excreta

#40

Post by Radim »

thisrod wrote: post #22
DigitalJack wrote: post #3

The 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.

There are many hypotheses about this; history only happens once, so it's hard to test them. Here are a couple of the more interesting ideas. Jared Diamond: Eurasia runs east-west and has a large temperate zone. This supports enough biodiversity that the plants and animals you need to start farming can be found in one place. Other continents run north-south, lack biodiversity, and couldn't be farmed until Europeans in…

And now for something completely different:

Could the strange and miraculous have been... Dennis Moore?! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLkhx0eqK5w

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