Did you hear about the contamination
levels of waterfronts in Mumbai? It's worse than it used to be. The
beaches are filthier. And what's more, much of the contamination is
faecal matter. Yes, shit mostly.
Before you start blaming the hundreds
of thousands of people who must squat on the beach – although there
is that problem too – consider the facts. Mumbai generates 2677 litres of sewaage, every day. Of this, only 774
million litres is treated. The rest just goes into the sea.
Perhaps you have heard of men
dying in sewers while trying to clear blockages. Sometimes, people
die just breathing the noxious air around a manhole. There was a news
report about the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation wanting to install a
ventilating system over manhole covers, after three people died from
the poisonous gases wafting up. There was another report about a
seven-year-old boy dying after he fell into an open drain in
Mehrauli, Delhi.
India has hundreds of open drains in
each city, and there are hundreds of cities. It is high time we began
to ask – how is it that we invest hundreds of billions in aircrafts, even space-craft, but are unwilling to find clean, efficient
technologies to fix the overwhelming toilet and sewage problem?
How is it that we continue to flush our
filth into rivers that form our drinking water supply? In Pradip
Saha's documentary 'Faecal Attraction', a dual question is posed to
the citizens of Delhi – where did they think their water comes
from, and where does the shit go?
Some respondents sheepishly admit
that the answer to both is probably the river Yamuna. Others,
including young and educated citizens, seem to think that once they
flush the toilet, the sewers carry their shit to a mysterious
location, a convenient 'somewhere else'. As the documentary shows,
sewage usually flows into water bodies like rivers, lakes, or else,
groundwater.
India generates 38,000 million litres
of sewage a day. 35 major cities account for over 15 million litres.
The government can treat only 12,000 million tonnes, about one-third
of the total. The Central Pollution Control Board released a report
called the ‘Status of sewage treatment in India’ a few years ago,
which said that the problem was likely to magnify to unmanageable
levels very quickly.
In one interview, Bindeshwar Pathak
(founder of Sulabh Sauchalaya) was quoted as saying that, even if we
halt the development of our cities, it would still take India 3000
years to lay safe sewer lines leading to centralised sewage
treatment plants. Only 269 towns (out of 7000) have treatment plants.
Experts suggest that a large part of the problem is that we depend
heavily on the state, and the state itself banks on a centralized
system of sewage treatment. Basically, this means that we are not
responsible for our own shit.
I can't help wondering why we don't
look to our glorious ancient culture when it comes to sanitation?
Thousands of years ago, the Indus Valley civilization had invested in
sewage systems. Humanity is as much about shitting as eating or
procreating, after all.
Nobody likes to embrace shit, of
course. But we simply can't go on if we let it flow into rivers and
seas. There are other, better ways of treating sewage. The technology
exists. And every cooperative housing society, every bunglow, every
town ought to invest in it, just as we invest in security systems and
water filters. We cannot eternally outsource the problem of sewage to
the government. We need to start seeing it as part of our own
struggle to build a decent life for ourselves.
First published here
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