Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

India Is Winning Its War on Human Waste

gatesnotes.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 303 posts

Re: India Is Winning Its War on Human Waste

#161

Post by kahrkunne »

redsummer wrote: post #126

Hinduism is a big problem. The Ganges is literally a river of shit - it has 120 times the safe level of fecal matter. Yet Hindus regard it as purifying and it's considered holy to have a dip in it. When you have a culture like that, it's going to be hard to persuade people to not shit in the water they drink.

True. The Ganges is probably one of the most disgusting things on earth. If your religion involves worshipping (and drinking of) a river full of poop and bloated human corpses, I couldn't justify it as civilized even if I tried.

Re: India Is Winning Its War on Human Waste

#162

Post by gramanat »

amorphid wrote: post #146
CodeCube wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this is it right here ... what better way to get that baby-fresh feeling than just popping a squat in the river, where the current takes away your inanimate offspring downstream, and cleans your nether regions. Humans are creatures of habit, and often, self interest (a clean arse) will win over benefits to others (see all politics ever, almost)

Say village A is upstream from village B. A poops in the water. How far downstream does B need to be for the water to be drinkable? Or is there no safe distance? If there is a safe distance, in theory, you could teach the villages in A to drink upstream and poop downstream. By the time the water gets to B, it's clean enough to drink?! Then teach B to poop upstream and drink downstream... You probably don't want to pu…

Well, the so called public defecation usually happens in a) slums b) rural areas where they have not built toilets at home. In the rural areas, they just go out into the fields which offer some privacy. It is never in the "public" like a river etc.

Re: India Is Winning Its War on Human Waste

#163

Post by toast0 »

redsummer wrote: post #126

Hinduism is a big problem. The Ganges is literally a river of shit - it has 120 times the safe level of fecal matter. Yet Hindus regard it as purifying and it's considered holy to have a dip in it. When you have a culture like that, it's going to be hard to persuade people to not shit in the water they drink.

You're going to have to make the connection between being a holy river, so people want to wade or swim in it and being ok with polluting it. If anything, I would think you could get people onboard with not putting their waste into a holy river?

Re: India Is Winning Its War on Human Waste

#165

Post by anigbrowl »

kirrent wrote: post #149
4684499 wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why don't they just use iron pans? It's more affordable and more natural, you don't have to put something in your food, and it's being heated directly at the bottom. Did they just invent this iron fish to create more jobs?

Literally in the linked Wikipedia article: "Although cast-iron cookware is known to transmit iron to food during cooking, the cost to obtain it is prohibitive for most of the individuals living in poverty in rural Cambodia, who earn less than $1 per day." In what world would a cast iron pan be cheaper than a small ingot?

It seems like it would be simpler and easier to just give them skillets than faffing around with ingots. If one is worried about the perception of value or suspicion of gifts one could offer to trade them for their existing cookware.

Re: India Is Winning Its War on Human Waste

#166

Post by anigbrowl »

paganel wrote: post #132
sidlls wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People understand just fine what "illness" is. Every culture has a long tradition of medical practice since long before anyone knew what a germ was, and people in many civilizations (this isn't some eurocentric western-world thing) have known for hundreds or thousands of years to keep feces away from their food and water. It seems obvious because it is obvious and has been, in India and practically everywhere else, f…

> What the parent described is probably due to other external factors (e.g. lack of choice, land restrictions or other things) that constrain behavior. It's also a cultural thing. Just the other day I was minding my own business on a relatively central street in the European Eastern capital where I live and all of a sudden I see a Roma lady, in her early 50s, reasonably well dressed, coming towards the lightning pole…

I can't help observing that it's very common for men to take a leak on the street, especially if they've been drinking. It's not the most sanitary habit but it's not especially harmful either, and I don't feel anything different about a woman squatting to take a leak either.

Public defecation, though, I have no hesitation about shaming someone for unless it's some sort of emergency.

Re: India Is Winning Its War on Human Waste

#167

Post by anigbrowl »

toomanybeersies wrote: post #144
Pica_soO wrote: post #113

The thing that strikes me as the most odd - is that until ww1 (thats right the recent Battlefieldified one)- soldiers would carry talismans into the battle, that where supposed to make them bulletproof and immortal. Thats right, something that sounds oh, so exotic, right in the midst of the west. Also, it helps if you look at the Congo and Europe during WW2. The same chaos, the same refugee rows, the same anarchy and…

If someone's shooting at you, you're going to make damn sure you take every measure possible to not get shot. There are no atheists in foxholes.

I don't get that phrase. I've been in a bunch of life-and-death situations and not once have I felt a sudden alteration in my religious views. I have to wonder whether it's an expression of anxiety on the part of the speaker rather than any sort of objective observation.

Re: India Is Winning Its War on Human Waste

#168

Post by pshirali »

kahrkunne wrote: post #152

How astonishing that a nation like India is just now learning to poo in the loo, yet somehow we in the west still think it's sensible to outsource our tech work to them (and then act surprised when the results are less than stellar)

This is a disgusting comment :(

Re: India Is Winning Its War on Human Waste

#170

Post by sorenjan »

rsync wrote: post #153
clock_tower wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

China used night soil as fertilizer historically; they don't anymore (when was the practice abandoned, I wonder? And is there any Chinese interest in terra preta?), but it got them into great habits. The same is true for at least Korea and Japan; I don't know as much about Southeast Asia. Only drinking hot drinks also helped China's health. Fernand Braudel, in The Structures of Everyday Life , discusses this in passi…

"(Where did they get the ice?)" That is a fantastic question ... Many different cities around the world have an "icehouse" street - the origin of the name being obvious. However, I know of an "icehouse" street in Hong Kong and I always wonder "when the icehouse was here, and this street was named for it, where in the world were they getting ice?" I know you can pack ice in sawdust and straw, etc., and keep it for the…

They got the ice from the east coast of the US and from Norway. Ice used to be big business.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_trade

Post reply on HN