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

201–210 of 303 posts

Re: India Is Winning Its War on Human Waste

#201

Post by Laforet »

lacampbell wrote: post #193
Laforet wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This arises from a mixture of two things: A strong agrarian tradition where no piece of human waste is going to be left festering in the sun - somebody is going to pick it up and make good use of it. In all seriousness this has been the case until chemical fertilisers became cheap enough, before then every town had organised dung-gatherer guilds who organised daily cleanup of faeces in the street and sold the product…

I'm not sure I buy the first two explanations. Taiwan is culturally Chinese, but if someone takes a crap on the street it'd be a small news story. Usually it's blamed on mainland tourists. I'd say it's more to do with development than anything else.

>Usually it's blamed on mainland tourists.

Having been to Taipei several times myself, I'd say that it is no better or worse than any Asian city. but that's really just prejudice. I will concede, however, that Taiwan had the value of hygiene worked into them during the Japanese rule. In the first ten years of the 20th century, there was 49 newspaper reports of public urination leading to a formal warning by the police in Taihoku alone (ironically, more than half of these high-profile cases were perpetuated by Japanese), and public record shows that thousands of people of all sorts of background were fined every year for the same offense that did not make it to the news.[0] This really goes to show that the colonial government took the concept of hygiene very seriously, but even today some people will just do as they please.[1]

[0]: https://books.google.com/books?id=AKi5Wm5Mu_UC, page 27

[1]: http://news.cts.com.tw/cts/general/201001/201001030380454.ht...

Re: India Is Winning Its War on Human Waste

#202

Post by lacampbell »

Laforet wrote: post #201
lacampbell wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure I buy the first two explanations. Taiwan is culturally Chinese, but if someone takes a crap on the street it'd be a small news story. Usually it's blamed on mainland tourists. I'd say it's more to do with development than anything else.

>Usually it's blamed on mainland tourists. Having been to Taipei several times myself, I'd say that it is no better or worse than any Asian city. but that's really just prejudice. I will concede, however, that Taiwan had the value of hygiene worked into them during the Japanese rule. In the first ten years of the 20th century, there was 49 newspaper reports of public urination leading to a formal warning by the polic…

I've never heard anyone complain about that stuff in Taipei the same way they complain about it in Mainland cities. But it's not like I've been taking surveys.

Re: India Is Winning Its War on Human Waste

#203

Post by Laforet »

geokon wrote: post #184
Laforet wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This arises from a mixture of two things: A strong agrarian tradition where no piece of human waste is going to be left festering in the sun - somebody is going to pick it up and make good use of it. In all seriousness this has been the case until chemical fertilisers became cheap enough, before then every town had organised dung-gatherer guilds who organised daily cleanup of faeces in the street and sold the product…

Living in China I've noticed that the attitude towards the very young does seem really similar to the attitude they have towards their pets. It's always been so baffling. Do you have any other info on the second point?

It's hard to find a book or non-paywalled journal article on top of my head, but the thesis below touches on the basic premise of the Chinese view on children.

http://dc.cod.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1007&context=n...

In short, Confucian scholars view personhood not as something gifted at conception or birth, but a learned virtue that develops progressively as each person lives through different stages of their lives. Thus rearing young children is not unlike taming a wild animal and a lot of nasty things kids do can be forgiven on the basis that they have not learned the proper way to act yet.

The ugly side of this thinking is that this naturally restricts youth rights since they are saw as an extension of the will of their parents; indeed one can argue that children are never fully independent until the death of their parents absolves them of these control and responsibilities. On the other hand, Confucianism has always been ambivalent if not indifferent to topics very touchy in the Judeo-Christian tradition such as abortion and infanticide, because the victims have not had a chance to develop their personhood yet, and thus these acts are sometimes considered deplorable but never compared to murder.

Re: India Is Winning Its War on Human Waste

#204

Post by vacri »

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.

However being in a foxhole is an entirely artificial situation, and people in foxholes aren't known for their long-range planning and forethought. If you're being shelled, you're not going to be thinking about whether you can service a new mortgage and whether you should refinance, for example.

Re: India Is Winning Its War on Human Waste

#205

Post by CydeWeys »

aianus wrote: post #135
sytelus wrote: post #88

The reason toilets don't get used even when available in India is that Indian version of toilets are not very maintainable. First every one needs to get water from somewhere and carry it all the way with them to toilet. If water turns out not to be enough then toilet retains the waste, start becoming smelly and unhygienic. Also because of extensive water use, its unpleasant place to walk around. Toilets with flushing…

Why can't they use outhouses? They're just holes in the ground (very little maintenance, no requirement for plumbing) and far better than shitting out in the open or in a potable water source.

Outhouses fill up very quickly with lots of people using them. You need regular service with someone picking up the shit. Exactly like Port-a-Johns, really.

Re: India Is Winning Its War on Human Waste

#206

Post by CydeWeys »

AlwaysRock wrote: post #94

Only 1.7 million people die from unsafe water? That's a lot less than I thought. It's still a awful and fixable issue but not as bad as I thought.

That's per year. It seems like an awfully high number to me. To contrast, something like 2.5M Americans are dying in total from all causes every year.

Re: India Is Winning Its War on Human Waste

#207

Post by tropo »

hangonhn wrote: post #74
Cyph0n wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, this is quite baffling. The only answer I can think of is that India hasn't been prioritizing education in rural communities. Population is not a valid excuse: do people still shit where they drink in China? I'm more understanding when it comes to the lack of basic sanitation facilities, but lack of education is inexcusable in this day and age!

No. China has historically used toilets. In fact, the earliest documented case of a flushing toilet date from the Han dynasty ( http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/851957.stm ) , which is more than 2000 years old, but that's rare. Most Chinese toilets were buckets in a separate room. China historically used night soil as fertilizers. These bucket toilets were carried out of the house and later used to fertilize c…

China, India, Korea, and Japan all used pig toilets. In some places, usage was 22.7% as of 2003.

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

Re: India Is Winning Its War on Human Waste

#208

Post by vacri »

lacampbell wrote: post #193
Laforet wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This arises from a mixture of two things: A strong agrarian tradition where no piece of human waste is going to be left festering in the sun - somebody is going to pick it up and make good use of it. In all seriousness this has been the case until chemical fertilisers became cheap enough, before then every town had organised dung-gatherer guilds who organised daily cleanup of faeces in the street and sold the product…

I'm not sure I buy the first two explanations. Taiwan is culturally Chinese, but if someone takes a crap on the street it'd be a small news story. Usually it's blamed on mainland tourists. I'd say it's more to do with development than anything else.

Taiwan hasn't seen the immense shift of rural to urban population than mainland China has.

Re: India Is Winning Its War on Human Waste

#209

Post by parennoob »

avar wrote: post #16

> Unfortunately, in many places, it’s not > feasible to lay down sewer pipes or build > treatment facilities. [...] But giving > people access to toilets isn’t enough. You > also have to persuade them to use the > toilets. I can't find it now, but there was a news video making the rounds a year or two ago that showed that this problem is much more fundamental than that. It showed a Indians in a tiny village who were…

I will bet that most of the comments in this thread are from people who have never lived in rural India.

I have, and will tell you the real reason. It has little to do with literacy or education. It is because (warning, this is going ironic) Indian people are incredibly disgusted about shit and want to not think about dealing with it.

I'm Indian myself. For example, we think toilet paper is a horrible idea. You just clean your shit with...paper...and just leave it like that? That would not fly, even in any of the villages you mention. They have to have water to clean their shit, usually supplied in a small bucket or vessel. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lota_(vessel)

Now think about temperatures. The current temperature at many places in India is more than a 100 degrees Fahrenheit. Your average restroom or shovel pit or whatever is going to smell incredibly bad and be full of flies and a horrible smell. That is why some people prefer the river, and don't use the toilets that are built for them (links elsewhere in this thread).

Solutions? It's a usability problem. Bidets for poop washing that can be filled up instead of using piped water, super hydrophobic coatings, really large pits (so you don't smell the waste) –- things like that are going to be the solution. Unfortunately, no one approaches it in that way, and prefers to go the route of "Let's teach these uneducated savages not to shit where they eat." This is very unfortunate and I hope it will change in the future.

Post reply on HN