It’s time to embark on a mission to resolve hygiene and sanitation issues
The World Health Organization (WHO) says, “Unhygienic conditions and practices at the household level create a dangerous environment with immediate health risk to children. Also, lack of sanitation facilities in schools helps transmit diseases. Waste dumps sites on the outskirts of almost all major cities provide hazardous environmental conditions to those living nearby and even more so to those living as scavengers on such waste. Sanitation interventions, technical and managerial, are badly needed in all areas in houses, schools, and within the community at large. These must be accompanied by the necessary behavioural changes in the child and adult populations, which pose a formidable hygiene education challenge to the health sector.”
The WHO report adds: “Further work on the evidence base, specifically targetting children, is required across the spectrum of sanitation, hygiene and behavioural interventions to reduce infectious diseases with an environmental aetiology.”
According a UNICEF report, 36 per cent of the world’s population — 2.5 billion people — lack improved sanitation facilities. Inadequate sanitation costs India `2.4 trillion ($53.8 billion) a year. “India’s sanitation deficit leads to losses worth roughly 6 per cent of its GDP,” according to a World Bank estimate.
So, unhygienic conditions are as much sources of diseases and death as unsafe drinking water. Poor, and most certainly Dalits and tribals, suffer the most.
Visit my village in east Uttar Pradesh and a village in west Uttar Pradesh. Or visit a village in the Tirunelveli district in Tamil Nadu or villages elsewhere in the country. If there is a caste hierarchy in terms of ‘purity’ and ‘pollution’, there is also a caste hierarchy in housing architecture. Most often, houses will be made depending on the rank in the caste hierarchy.
In north India for instance, almost all upper caste houses will have aangan in the centre of the house — a space opening up to the sky. Women would bathe in the open space surrounded by rooms. Water, including that from the kitchen, would flow out through a primitive type of underground water sewage system. The water would go out of houses up to a distance of 15 to 20 metres. It would collect at a point, making it a nano pond, which became a breeding ground for mosquitoes and flies.
In the houses of Dalits, tribals and people from the lower castes, the situation is worse. Most often, houses have no aangans and therefore no sewage system. The used water forms puddles at the door step. A nano pond is created at the very door step for mosquitoes and flies to thrive.Come to urban slums and unorganised housing colonies. In slums, there would be used water all over. Water would in fact turn black and smell foul. The distance between water pits and kitchen could be a few feet. Most huts in slums would, in fact, have no kitchens at all.
Garbage adds to the woes of slum dwellers. Most often, slums don’t have fixed garbage storage that is cleared by municipal authorities. In the absence of fixed garbage storage, there are multiple garbage sites all over the slums.
In unorganised housing localities, you can find larger water pits all over. Since the term ‘unorganised’ amounts to ‘illegal’, such areas too are not well served by municipalities. As a result, unorganised areas are slightly better than slums when it comes to hygiene and sanitation.
Worse still, streets and areas surrounding slums and unorganised housing localities are rarely cleaned. Filth gathers and dust rules the roost in these areas.Because of unhygienic conditions in the countryside and urban slums, a number of diseases spread. Children are the worst sufferers.As WHO, UNICEF and other independent agencies argue with empirical studies, unsafe drinking water and unhygienic conditions cause malnutrition in children. This costs the nation a lot and the Governments end up spending crores to prevent child malnutrition.
The young, middle aged and elderly are affected by a host of diseases caused by unhygienic conditions. Because of the diseases caused by unhygienic conditions, millions of Indians under perform. India loses its services and that affects the GDP negatively. Why can’t India embark on a mission to resolve hygiene and sanitation issues, which affect millions of Indians and the nationIJ
When a child suffers from malnutrition, India loses money on the child. When an adult contracts a disease, his productive abilities get stunted and the nation loses on that count. Many people visit Government hospitals because they are infected with diseases due to unhygienic situations around them and the nation loses money on that count. Why can’t India come out with a mission statement of Clean India and allot billions of rupees for itIJ