CSE assessment finds major gaps in making villages open defecation free

An assessment by an environment policy think tank of 'Swachh Bharat Mission', under which toilets have been built to make villages open defecation free, has found major gaps in the entire process, and said even if India gets ODF status by February 2019, it will not become cleaner.

According to the government, by February next year India will lay claim to being an open defecation free nation.

The assessment done by the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) said new toilets will produce one lakh tonne of excreta every day and the big question is disposal of the waste, which if not managed properly, can contaminate land and water, and become a "gigantic" public health problem.

The CSE-Down To Earth analysis also found anomalies in the way the toilets have been constructed.

The assessment comes as India gets ready to mark the Mahatma's 150th birth anniversary this year with celebrations.

Under the government's flagship scheme Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM), 76 per cent of India's villages have been declared open defecation free and around 83.8 million toilets have been built, CSE said.

"This means the infamous distinction of having the world's largest number of people going out to defecate in the open is all set to be history. This switchover involving a generation-old behaviour of some 600 million people is no mean feat," CSE director general Sunita Narain said.

Building toilets is only the first and perhaps the easiest step towards attaining a 'clean India' status, she said.

"It cannot be seen as the ultimate yardstick of success. What happens to the immense amounts of solid and liquid waste that these millions of new toilets would generate? If human excreta is not handled carefully safely disposed of or reused it will add to our health burden and negate all the work done to build toilets," Narain said.

The CSE-Down To Earth analysis titled 'A sea of sewage', gives a taste of exactly how monumental the problem would be - 1,00,000 tonne of excreta every day produced by 720 million people using 144 million household toilets.

Just to give a sense of scale, more than 5,200 trucks would be needed every day to transport this amount of excreta, the CSE said. The environment policy think tank based this estimate on the standard calculation that on an average, an individual produces 128 gram of excreta every day.

"This could turn out to be a far bigger problem than that of open defecation. If not managed properly, the mind-boggling amounts of waste that these toilets will spew forth close to people's homes can severely contaminate land and water sources," said Sushmita Sengupta, programme manager, rural water-waste management, CSE.

Narain further said it is clear that toilets must be built keeping in mind safe disposal and recycle of waste.

"Without this, we will not get the benefits of safe sanitation -- the reduction in disease burden because of safe disposal of human waste. This is the challenge that we must keep our focus on," she said.

CSE said what compounds the problem is the manner in which the entire process of making villages ODF has been carried out. The CSE-Down To Earth analysis notes major gaps in the process.

To declare India's 0.6 million villages ODF, the 2011 Census involved 2.7 million officials, ostensibly working in collaboration with 3.6 million village residents.

However, the rush to achieve targets has led to "false" claims, CSE maintained.

The analysis quotes the reports of the Comptroller and Auditor General of India on Gujarat and Uttarakhand, which have exposed cases of fudging of data.

For verification of the ODF process, the Union Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation recommends that the state officials or departments concerned should be involved in the process for nine months.

"During this period, they would be expected to focus on things like availability of water, cleanliness of water sources and water bodies, decentralised waste management, maintenance of school and anganwadi toilets and others.

"But the states have modified these guidelines (sanitation is a state subject) and have concentrated largely and merely on construction of toilets, without paying much attention to the other aspects," CSE said.

Narain said post-2019, the sanitation questions in India will be different, and yet the same and the challenge will remain - how to ensure that the toilets continue to be maintained, used and how to make sure that human excreta is safely handled.

"If this is not done, the massive investment of counting toilets could go waste -- worse, governments would now believe that their task is done and priorities will change.

"But the expected health outcome, which requires not just building and using toilets but ensuring that water is not contaminated, will not be realised. This clearly must be avoided at all costs. For the Indian toilet success to have a sustainable future, monitoring and public scrutiny must continue," she added.