Toilet, Toilet Across the wall . But where should she go when nature calls ?
The story of every 1 in 3 women belonging to the developing world.
“Ikde Aa. Mi Tula Dakhavato.”
— “Come Here. I will show you”
‘Ajji’ (Grandma) grabbed my hand firmly as she led me towards her humble dwelling. ‘She’- clinging to a ray of hope she probably saw in me and ‘I’- following her with a childlike compassion & curiosity.
What I eventually saw was a house in shambles and the ‘ghost’ of a superstructure built for a namesake toilet.
The couple lives on meager means without any sustainable source of income.
Their less than half built toilet stares in the backdrop. Photo: Niharika Singh
Ajji suffers from the twin stigma of being an ‘elderly’ as well as being a ‘female’, finding it unbearable (with seeping old age & limited bladder control) to wait till wee hours just to relieve herself. Ironically, we made toilet a luxury commodity for her & so many other women- not just a ‘basic necessity’.
And this is the story of every 1 in 3 women belonging to the developing world, who live without access to safe sanitation as per a WaterAid estimate.
Around the corner of the village is the house of Balasaheb Kshirsagar* who laments the fact that he received only Rs.3000 out of his first installment of Rs.4000. Apparently, the remaining part of the Rs.12000 subsidy never arrived and neither did government officials who convinced him to start construction.
With a 15 year old adolescent girl at home to take care of, he feels a pressing need for a toilet now more than ever.
Figures of the All India Baseline Survey(2012–13) conducted by Ministry of Drinking Water & Sanitation suggest that 1.39 crore of the total 7.41 crore individual household toilets in India were defunct.
Even the urban landscape has not spared women from this fate with virtually nonexistent safe and clean sanitation facilities along our highways and public places.
Ask any woman/girl how many times she had to control her ‘pee’ and ‘poo’ while travelling and sit back watching while she delves into the advanced algebra of calculations.
She would vividly remember the suffering yet won’t be able to come up with a number.
Fortunately, The ‘Right to Pee’ campaign nudged few State governments like Govt. of Maharashtra to open up 400 Jansuvidha Kendra Toilets along the highways. Nevertheless, it is still a long way to go unless taken up on a Central level.
Rashmi*, 24, an expectant mother from Begada village near Tuljapur, blushes when we talk about the baby.
But her expression changes to that of disdain when she confides,
“I feel insecure & ashamed while going outside to the fields for defecation. I don’t like it when others…especially men…stare at my baby bump. Had there been a toilet at home, it would have been more comfortable.”
But this story just doesn’t stop at inconvenience. It picks few other companions enroute in the face of sexual harassment, shame, disgust, maternal mortality, lost hours of productivity & a never ending vicious cycle of health expenditures, poverty and malnutrition.
A study conducted by the DFID funded SHARE Research program on 667 pregnant women of rural Odisha found that of the 58.2% women who practiced open defecation, 25.7% experienced Adverse Pregnancy Outcomes(APO’s) such as spontaneous abortions & stillbirths- including 19.4% preterm births and 14.2% births with low birth weight.
A testimonial to these results is the abysmal Maternal Mortality Rate of India at 167 for 100,000 live births with neighbors like Bhutan doing still better at 148. (NITI Aayog,World Bank)
Research has also shown good evidence that poor sanitation promotes Hookworm Infestation which is a risk factor for maternal anaemia and in turn directly linked to APO’s. On the other hand, Puerperal Sepsis- a condition emanating from poor hygiene contributes to 8% of all global maternal deaths.
Imagine the scale of this impending global health crisis with 1.25 billion women & girls without any access to improved sanitation. (WHO,UNICEF 2012)
Reportedly, 23% adolescent girls who drop out of school do so because of shortage of clean toilet facilities at school.
What is more terrifying is the fact that we are still analyzing sanitation through the lens of cost- benefit analysis ( sanitation costing 5.2% of total GDP), leaving behind all empathy to understand that for a girl who drops out of school- it costs her a lifetime of literate future, a productive livelihood , empowered opinion, more life choices, emboldened decision making and eventually all her dreams.
Women around the world today are fighting for their rights to equality- from breaking glass ceiling to equal wages.
Somewhere forgetting in the conundrum, their very basic right- ‘The Right to Equitable Sanitation & Hygiene.’
*Names Changed for Privacy.
References:
WHO, UNICEF(2012). Countdown to2015: Maternal, Newborn and Child Survival;Building a Future for Women and Children. WHO, Geneva.
Padhi BK, Baker KK, Dutta A, Cumming O, Freeman MC, Satpathy R, et al. (2015) Risk of Adverse Pregnancy Outcomes among Women Practicing Poor Sanitation in Rural India: A Population-Based Prospective Cohort Study. PLoS Med 12(7): e1001851. doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.1001851
http://niti.gov.in/content/maternal-mortality-ratio-mmr-100000-live-births
http://databank.worldbank.org/data/reports.aspx?source=2&series=SH.STA.MMRT&country=