I was brought up short the other day at
the entrance to the housing complex where I live. There was a fat
little cake of slowly dessicating shit. It had already been there a few
days.
I see open gutters everyday. Before or
during the monsoon months, they are cleaned out. There are little
piles of filth decorating the length of the street for days; perhaps
the somebody who was paid to clean the gutter has not been paid to
carry away the filth. When it does get carried away, it must go...
where? A dumpyard? A river?
All calls for a clean India have thus
far been focussed on littering, sweeping of the streets and open
defecation by human citizens. What doesn't often get mentioned is
open defecation by stray animals, including cows, bulls, dogs and
rats.
Now the thing is, we aren't going to be
able to get animals to use a commode, not that I can foresee. And our
dear leaders have been enthusiastically pointing out the great
benefits of animal potty, especially bovine – that it makes for
great fertilizer, that it can be turned into cooking fuel or mixed
with building material and so on.
I have no argument with that. True,
potty does make for great organic fertilisers. However, could it not
be that fresh bovine potty also exposes humans – or other animals?
– to infection just the same as human potty left lying on the
streets, on beaches, and in the pretty fields of sugarcane?
Conversely, is it not true that human beings are capable of
generating a fair bit of fertilizer themselves?
I am not an expert in faecal matter,
nor agriculture. But it does seem to me that human beings are far too
squeamish about properly addressing their own excrement. There was a
time, scholars say, when a 'crock of shit' was a valuable commodity.
Centuries ago, people in Asia were trading in human waste. Someone
was collecting human exrement by the bucketful and selling it to
farmers as manure. Europe had its nightsoil collectors too. Then came
the era of modern indoor toilets and the flush system, and all
potential manure went into the nearest river, which sadly was the
population's main water supply.
That's something to think about, isn't
it? If there's one thing our country doesn't lack, it is human
excrement. Should we really be in such a hurry to flush it down a
drain at a time when we know that it is likely to add to water
pollution? Shouldn't we also be trying to figure out alternatives
that don't involve large scale piped sewage transportation?
Currently, most – over 70 percent –
of India's sewage goes untreated. Besides, there are several leaks in
pipes. The recent horror of toxic froth engulfing parts of Bangalore
is also linked to the problem of millions of tonnes of sewage going
into the lakes.
There is so much talk of 'filth' and
its impact on public health. Municipalities that are quite well
funded, as Mumbai is, display filth and faeces in every suburb. But
'open' defecation is not the only problem. The bigger problem is that
much of the waste goes into the sea, or into one of the half dozen
rivers that have since ceased to flow.
Would it not make more sense for us to
make good on all that human shit? If there was gold in it once, there
will be gold in it again. Surely, we just have to invest a tiny bit
in making technology work for us rather than just replicating
technologies fixated on the flush?
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