SulabhENVIS Centre

Scavengers escape stink to train for new jobs:Government Wants To Wipe Out Profession By 2009

New Delhi: In her lifetime, Prakashi Bhagwane has known many smells. But the most recurring is the one that rises from human excreta. Over the last 20 years, she has learnt to endure it. As they say, it came with the job.
   But in the past few days, Prakashi has been grappling with another bunch of smells, different from the putrid odour that rushes towards her when she cleans the dry latrines in the shabby, underclass colonies near her home in Gali No.1, Old Seelampur. These are the smells of cream bleach, cleansing milk and facial gel. The 35-year-old manual scavenger is training to be a beautician.
   Back in January 2007, the Union ministry for social justice and empowerment started a self-employment scheme for rehabilitation of manual scavengers. According to official figures, there are about 3.42 lakh manual scavengers in the country; of them about 15,000 are in Delhi. By offering them better alternatives, the government aims to wipe out the profession by March 2009. The rehabilitation centre in Dilshad Garden where Prakashi trains is one such avenue.
   Apart from the beautician’s course, a favourite among the women, several other courses are also on offer: textile design, electrical repairs. Anita Kalra, who trains the girls in the art of manicure and pedicure, says there is tremendous enthusiasm among the 28 girls who have joined the course. Some of the younger girls haven’t been scavengers themselves although they come from families traditionally involved in the profession.
   ‘‘The huge rush might force us to divide them into two batches. Some girls who came a few days after the course had started pleaded with us to let them join. They said, we cannot wait for the next batch to begin in three months,” says Kalra.
   There are some complications though. Despite keen to learn the new craft, Prakashi hasn’t quit what she says is her family profession. Not as yet. It’s a job that her father carried out with diligence and dignity throughout his life. ‘‘My father believed,’’ says Prakashi, ‘‘that you can always do this job to fill your stomach.’’
   It’s only when government officials came calling at her home and explained why she should be looking for a new occupation that Prakashi had a re-think. The officials promised her a stipend of Rs 1,000 during the training but that was much lower than Rs 2,500, the amount she earned every month for cleaning the latrines of about 30 homes. That was a big contribution to the family kitty, apart from her husband’s salary who works as an MCD sweeper.
   Nonetheless, the lure of learning a new skill was too hard to resist. Sometimes Prakashi is late for the classes due to her morning duty and misses the government bus that gives them a free ride to the complex. ‘‘A couple of times I had to take a scooter,’’ she says.
   But her eagerness to embrace the new craft is transparent. ‘‘I wasn’t much interested in make-up,’’ Prakashi says shyly. ‘‘I just used to watch my daughters — one is 18, the other 15 — doing threading and all that. Now I want to learn the art of make-up.’’
   She has it all figured out. ‘‘There is some space in my house. I can convert it into a beauty parlour,’’ Prakashi says.
   But, it isn’t as easy for some others. The girls who have just finished their three-month textile design course are wondering what to do next. ‘‘We haven’t really perfected our wares and would like to learn for a couple of months more,’’ says Kusum Bhagwan. Another girl asks, ‘‘Can we get loans to buy sewing machines?’’ A teenager in a yellow salwar pipes in, ‘‘What’s the use of learning this craft, if we have no opportunities to implement them somewhere?’’ Then she adds: ‘‘Nobody would like to go back to manual scavenging. But the option must be better.’’

TOILETS ARE not an issue for you and me. But for millions in India's villages, the absence of a toilet is a reality For many it's not even a need that is felt. For others, it is a question of financial priorities. Over 700 million people in India still live without proper sanitation. The resulting poor hygiene is responsible for approximately 1,000 children under five years dying every day due to diarrhoea alone. Poor hygiene, lack of sanitation and inadequate or unsafe water together contribute to about 88 per cent of diarrhoea deaths.

The fact is that sanitation issues did not command sufficient public investment till the end of the 1970s. A total 180 million man-days that's Rs 12 bil- lion rupees are lost every year due to sanitation-related diseases. Sanitation acquired importance in the 1980s when the Government of India encouraged the construction of household toilets in the villages under the Central Rural Sanitation Programme.

However the programme did not become a major success as it promoted a single design at a single price and gave a high subsidy with limited funds available. As a result, the government was only able to allot one or two latrines per village, and this often went to the prominent members.

The subsequent Total Sanitation Campaign has sought to increase toilet construction and usage by shifting to low subsidies and a greater stress on creating household involvement through awareness. Its success is evident from the fact that while in 1997-98 only about 1.3 million toilets were built, in 2003-04 the figure jumped to over 6 million, followed by over 9 million toilets being built in 2006-07. It is expected that the number of household toilets constructed during 2007-08 may actually exceed a crore.

The key to this success has been the involvement of the Panchayati Raj Institutions (PRI) under the Nirmal Gram Puraskar, the incentive award scheme. The PRIs have been motivated to promote sanitation in their community by influencing behaviour change and creating a demand. The Nirmal Gram Puraskar awards have seen an enormous increase in the number of awardees from across the country - from 40 PRIs awarded in 2004-05 to over 700 in 2005-06. Approximately, 30,000 PRIs have already applied for the award in 2008. All this has meant that states like West Bengal, Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh are close to achieving the 'Millennium Development Targets'.

While it is important to celebrate the gains made in increasing sanitation coverage nationwide, we must not forget that this is only the beginning. There is a long way to go before total sanitation is achieved. The challenge ahead is not only to maintain the momentum, but it is also to accelerate the pace of sanitation coverage.

Although 40 million households have been reached so far, there are still more than 70 million households across the country without toilets. The Total Sanitation Campaign and Nirmal Gram Puraskar have shown that sanitation is achievable. But before we turn the page, we must know that the campaign needs consistent and dedicated support. What we need is not a spring cleaning but a sea change conducted on a war footing.
N.C. Saxena is Former Secretary, Planning Commission

Tiruchi: In a bid to encourage people in the lower middle-class to use toilets, the Society for Community Organization and People’s Education (SCOPE), has come up with the idea of paying residents using toilet facilities. The urine collected from Saliyar Street in Musiri, a small town near Tiruchi in Tamil Nadu, also goes for research to test its efficacy as a fertilizer.
   All a person needs to do is flash his/her user card after using the toilet and get a tick mark against the particular date to indicate that he or she should be paid 10 paise for the visit. Residents are given user cards and paid on a monthly basis; most families make upto Rs 30 at the end of each month — provided they’ve emptied their bladders into the pot a sufficient number of times each day.
   It’s a win-win situation for the university which now readily gets pure urine in sizable quantities for research — on an average, about 250 litres. According to C Ponniah, professor, Department of Soil and Crops, Agricultural College and Research Institute, Killikulam in Thoothukudi, application of urine as liquid fertilizer for paddy could reduce fertilizer cost by 25% for farmers.
   “Urine contains nitrogen in the form of ammonia, which is most suitable for crops”, said Ponniah. TNAU is carrying out the research, funded by the Netherlands-based group WASTE, on a plot located near the toilets. The site is divided into 30 plots and paddy crop is raised in the area with varying dosages of urine. The crop condition is being monitored closely and developments under various parameters are being recorded.

Tiruchi: In this part of the country, it truly pays to relieve oneself.
   Residents of Saliyar Street in Musiri, a small town near Tiruchi in Tamil Nadu, are getting paid to use toilets. While people elsewhere have to hastily dig into their pockets and shell out a rupee or more to relieve themselves in a dingy public urinal, around 300 families in Musiri have found they can actually profit everytime they answer nature’s call. By up to Rs 30 a month.
   Essentially, the system serves two purposes. While it encourages people in the lower middle-class neighbourhood to use toilets, the urine collected goes for research to test its efficacy as a fertilizer.
   M Subburaman, director of Society for Community Organization and People’s Education (SCOPE), which came up with the novel idea, claimed this was the first time anywhere in the world that users were being paid to use a toilet. The plan emerged from an agreement signed in 2007 after the Tamil Nadu Agricultural University approached SCOPE and signed an agreement to help in its research on urine as a liquid fertilizer.
   Initially, those living in Saliyar Street were amused when they heard about the use-and-earn facility. But now the queues are getting longer before the eco sanitation (ecosan) toilet put up by the Tiruchi-based nongovernment organization.
   ‘‘In fact, many of us started using toilets for urination only after the ecosan toilets were constructed in the area,’’ said S Rajasekaran, 42, a lorry cleaner. Although it was the novelty of the project that initially attracted many, people have also realized the health benefits and stopped using public spaces to relieve themselves. ‘‘Now even children in the locality do not urinate in the open, thanks to the 10 paise incentive,’’ said Rajasekaran.

http://epaper.timesofindia.com Dated: 06/07/2008