Thread by @OmairTAhmad

1. On October 2nd the Indian government is due to announce that India is "open defecation free", based on a Central-government programme providing funds to build toilets.

Here is a climate change perspective on why this is not just a lie, makes open defecation hard to eradicate.

2. There is good reason to suggest that the governments numbers are faulty, and that building toilets is not enough.

Others have argued this point, and have done the research: riceinstitute.org/research/30001…

I want to look at how EVEN if the government's data was right it is a failure.

3. The crux of the matter is water, its availability, and the most crucial impact of climate change - floods and droughts.

Even if every individual has access to a toilet, the toilets have to have water to be cleaned, to function.

4. Every person who has seen an old municipality toilet in small town, or rural, India knows this problem.

An unclean toilet is worse than no toilet at all, a breeding ground for disease.

Crucially no Centrally run scheme can address this. Water and sanitation are local issues.

5. By overriding the authority of state-level and municipal actors, the Swachch Bharat scheme has weakened the very institutions on which successful sanitation rests.

The reason why this is important is that water, and the preservation of water bodies, is a municipal issue.

6. For years the power of municipal actors has been overriden by state-level, and Central politicians, leaving urbanisation a disaster across India: thethirdpole.net/en/2017/02/13/…

Even our wealthiest cities - Delhi, Bombay, Bangalore - are a disaster during the rains.

7. The core problem is that those that are responsible, have no power, and so citizens cannot hold anybody accountable.

A striking example is the cleaning up of Nainital Lake, which happened because the Uttarakhand High Court was moved there, and judges acted.

8. It required the personal intervention of a High Court to save the precious wetland economy on which all of Nainital depended.

I submit to you that we will not have High Courts in every small town where mismanaged urbanisation is choking water resources.

9. The other aspect of the climate change issue is simple: warmer air holds more water, this means it requires more water in the air before it rains, and when it rains, more water falls in short periods.

In other words: longer periods of drought mixed with intense rainfall.

10. When large cities like Chennai run out of water, how much water will be there for cleaning toilets?

When we send trains of water to drought-hit Maharashtra, do you think sanitation will be a priority, or survival?

Will we be open defecation-free during droughts?

11. Then there is the floods, as are happening across north India now.

You understand that when flood waters reach toilets, they only spread the filth around, no?

There are toilets designed to deal with it: thethirdpole.net/en/2017/09/05/…

I will bet none have been built by SBA funds.

12. This problem is not going away, and the government is well aware of it.

The IMD reports this year on how far from average the monsoon was are self-explanatory: thethirdpole.net/en/2019/09/06/…

13. Even more, the key decisionmakers in power realise that to deal with water issues we have to involve local communities, strengthen local decisionmaking: thethirdpole.net/en/2019/07/30/…

Nevertheless, programmes like SBA weaken that very thing.

14. There are two countries in our neighbourhood, with similar per capita incomes, who have done much better: Bhutan and Bangladesh.

In both cases the successes in fighting open defecation comes from decisionmaking closer to the people.

15. Bhutan's example is striking: thethirdpole.net/en/2016/11/22/…

"earlier, when Bhutan’s health monitoring system did not differentiate between sanitary and unsanitary toilets, nor recorded whether toilets were used. Thus overall coverage was misleadingly high at 95%, said Yonzan....

16. "... in reality... coverage turned out to be only 58% when measured using improved sanitation... A basic toilet only separates humans from excreta, but not necessarily hygienically, whereas “improved sanitation facilities include those with sewer connections, septic system...

17. "...connections, pour-flush latrines, compost toilet, ventilated improved pit latrines and pit latrines with a slab or covered pit”."

~~

Bangladesh's example is also important, because the key to fighting open defecation was not just empowering local actors, but also women.

18. thethirdpole.net/en/2017/09/07/…

"“Women in rural areas are vulnerable when it comes to the use of latrines,” said Islam. “Brac’s participatory rural appraisal started including both men and women..."

19. "...This helped us know...where new latrines are needed and what their design should be [according to gender-specific needs], because it is often unsafe for women to walk far to use the toilet.”... Brac gives leadership training to one male & one female from each community."

20. The striking thing about Bangladesh's example, which, poorer than us declared itself "open defecation free" in 2016 (closer to the basic model that Bhutan has surpassed), is that this was led by Brac - an NGO, local government actors, and empowered local citizens.

21. In stark contrast the Indian approach has been highly centralised, and so disempoering that children are being killed: thewire.in/caste/madhya-p…

Whatever we say on Oct 2, the shit is going to to stick to us for some time.

-end-