I think we Indians are still trying to overcome our false sense of cleanliness. We keep our own houses clean but expect divine intervention outside. Partly due to the still-existing caste system, where the lowest castes are responsible for clearing the muck, associations with this work is looked down upon. Therefore the uninterestedness of the typical Indian in solving the problem. Public toilets are few and far between, and most go unmaintained for lack of people willing to do the job. This attitude is changing fast though, thanks largely to improvements in technology and pay which make it safer to engage in and survive doing such work.
India is drowning in its own excreta
51–60 of 137 posts
Re: India is drowning in its own excreta
#52Indian 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.
Are you writing that they should have been pro-sterilisation? They could just round up and shoot all the slum inhabitants so they wouldn't need to wait an entire generation to be rid of them.
Re: India is drowning in its own excreta
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
>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. Popul…
> Widespread public problems this this cannot be solved by individual citizens or organizations. They need the power, money and resources of a government. More to the point, they need an entity that is both powerful enough to force change and not bound by the same incentives that the polluting companies are. It's down to a Nash equilibrium, which is the stable strategy that obtains when everyone makes the best decisi…
What can be more powerful than the collective power of masses? Neither can the government be blamed entirely nor can people just wash their hands off saying we are not powerful enough.In a city like Mumbai there is a wide diversity of income classes. There are people who see open defecation everyday on their way to work but they do nothing about it. The least they can do is go talk to the people in the slums about how open defecation is bad and how they should avoid it. It is better to take some steps and do something about problems than to wait for government or any other "powerful" body to come help you out. It is not just the slums that are suffering, diseases can be easily caught by anyone else who does use proper toilets and sanitation.
Re: India is drowning in its own excreta
#54There is an amazing citizen led initiative called the "The Ugly Indian" to clean Indian cities. They've been having significant impact in Bangalore.
See some of their work here,
http://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Ugly-Indian/12345979104661...
Re: India is drowning in its own excreta
#55no mention of india spending $1 trillion on infrastructure over 2013 - 2018.
Even if true, 20%-30% of that is probably taken as a winners fee by the politicians. So the contractors have to buy substandard materials and labor, causing this "infrastructure" to last a decade or two, at best.
Re: India is drowning in its own excreta
#56Reminds me of the horse manure crisis in NYC http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2009/11/16/09111...
Not that any comparison can be made, they are really completely different.
Re: India is drowning in its own excreta
#57Indian 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.
Is this for India? Or the world? I'll assume you mean world as that's somewhat less harsh and less NIMBY. Alternatively, education, good government and a decent economy and birth rates fall. And there is then the bonus of no fascist/pseudo communist population control bent.
Re: India is drowning in its own excreta
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
Would that work on a massive scale? What's the reason it isn't done now?
You still have to physically remove the composted feces which is a logistical nightmare in an urban area, there are reliability problems with maintaining the proper environment for proper decomposition (temperature & moisture) and compared to pit toilets are bigger and more expensive (though in an urban area, you don't have the land for pit toilets). Really, a wet sewage system is superior for densely packed areas.
Wet doesn't mean pipes to a processing plant necessarily though. Ive seen an amazing system that used a moderate sized pond, masses of reeds and somehow this processed the water and filtered it. There were fish and ducks swimming in it. That said, if dealt with waste from one house. I'm not sure this would scale very well.
Re: India is drowning in its own excreta
#59[deleted]
Most countries I care to live in don't have issues of open defecation and water sources contaminated with shit. Generally, people care about basic hygiene issues before they look at the other stuff. If a country's hygiene is so bad it has a 100x larger chance that it might kill you, the rest is irrelevant. Between that and the corruption, India is one country I'm not setting foot in for the foreseeable future. It's a…
Most countries would, I'm pretty sure, have waterways contaminated with shit. Mine does (New Zealand) and most I've been to have had warnings about not drinking stream water, even in remote ares. Open defecation though? Nope.
Re: India is drowning in its own excreta
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Widespread public problems this this cannot be solved by individual citizens or organizations. They need the power, money and resources of a government. More to the point, they need an entity that is both powerful enough to force change and not bound by the same incentives that the polluting companies are. It's down to a Nash equilibrium, which is the stable strategy that obtains when everyone makes the best decisi…
What can be more powerful than the collective power of masses? Neither can the government be blamed entirely nor can people just wash their hands off saying we are not powerful enough.In a city like Mumbai there is a wide diversity of income classes. There are people who see open defecation everyday on their way to work but they do nothing about it. The least they can do is go talk to the people in the slums about ho…
True only if the masses care. And (worldwide) they don't (otherwise there would be ~99% participation in voting, and so on)