The Hindu : Karnataka / Bangalore News : ‘No man’s land’: community toilets

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, Nov 19, 2007
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Karnataka

Karnataka - Bangalore

‘No man’s land’: community toilets

Afshan Yasmeen and Swathi Shivanand

A reality check of slum toilets in the city on November 19 — World Toilet Day

— Photo: Sampath Kumar G.P.

Can it get worse than this? The dismal state of a community toilet at Austin slum area in Bangalore.

BANGALORE: “If I need to relieve myself, I have to go to the open field across the road either before sunrise or after sunset. That has been my routine for years. It is very rare that I go to the community toilets because I have to pay to use them,” says Zaithunissa Begum, a resident of Shashtrinagar slum in Koramangala.

There are many like her in India’s technology capital, who still use open fields. With no access to sanitation facilities, residents of the city’s 400-odd slums are forced to relieve themselves in the open.

The Hindu visited a few city slums to do a reality check on the average citizen’s access to clean toilets. World Toilet Day is being observed on November 19, to increase awareness of a citizen’s right to a toilet environment of cleanliness, hygiene and privacy.

Maya Bazaar

You are more than likely to miss the narrow entrance to this slum, flanked as it is by the Sri Balaji theatre, the sprawling quarters of the Defence Colony and the high compound walls of a government school.

The Maya Bazaar slum in Vannarpet has not been provided even basic toilet facilities. Venkatamma, a manual labourer, is cooking lunch while her three scantily-clothed children play in the dirty stream that flows past her tiny house. She says, “Many people here have built their own toilets. But my husband and I earn only Rs. 1,500 a month, and of that Rs. 600 goes for rent.”

She leaves the children at home when she goes to work. “By the time I return, they would have defecated right here. People around scream at us for the filth, but what do I do?”

Of the 5,000 or so families in Shastrinagar and Rajendranagar slums, located near National Games Village, in Koramangala, only 25 per cent have individual toilets. “But they are of no use as the sanitary lines are always clogged. Only some who have illegally connected lines to the adjoining open storm water drain are lucky,” says Amruthraj of the local Dr. B.R. Ambedkar Youth Welfare Association.

L. Vimala, Fareeda, Sultana, Puspha and R. Kamalamma are embarrassed to use the open areas. “But we have no other go. Why should we pay and use the dirty community toilet?” Sultana says.

Hardship

All these women have a makeshift bathroom (a space outside the house covered with old mats or plastic sheets on four sides) with no outlet for the water to drain out.

“We have to collect waste water in a bucket and throw it in the drain. Our relatives living in villages have better facilities than us,” Fareeda says.

Kodandapani, who works as a construction worker, belongs to a six-member family. “My daily earnings are Rs. 50 on days that I get work. If I spend Rs. 6 to Rs. 10 for using the community toilet, what will my family eat? So we go out in the open,” he says.

The condition of the community toilet in this slum is filthy. With the Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagar Palike (BBMP) and the Karnataka Slum Clearance Board (KSCB) refusing to take responsibility, such community toilets are badly maintained. Though these toilets are for free use, the slum leaders assign individuals to collect a user fee, a senior BBMP official told The Hindu.

If you draw the attention of KSCB officials to the basic amenities in any slum recognised by the Government, they merely shrug and say maintenance of toilets is the burden of the BBMP. “But in the new houses that we are building under the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM), every house will have an individual toilet. Community toilets are not a viable proposition. They are like no man’s land. No one wants to look after them,” says a senior official at the KSCB.

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