Date:19/11/2007 URL: http://www.thehindu.com/2007/11/19/stories/2007111954810800.htm

Karnataka - Bangalore

‘No man’s land: community toilets’

Afshan Yasmeen and Swathi Shivanand

BANGALORE: “If I need to relieve myself, I have to go to the open field across the road either before sunrise or after sunset. That has been my routine for years. It is very rare that I go to the community toilets because I have to pay to use them,” says Zaithunissa Begum, a resident of Shashtrinagar slum in Koramangala.

There are many like her in India’s technology capital, who still use open fields. With no access to sanitation facilities, residents of the city’s 400-odd slums are forced to relieve themselves in the open.

The Hindu visited a few city slums to do a reality check on the average citizen’s access to clean toilets. World Toilet Day is being observed on November 19, to increase awareness of a citizen’s right to a toilet environment of cleanliness, hygiene and privacy.

You are more than likely to miss the narrow entrance to this slum, flanked as it is by the Sri Balaji theatre, the sprawling quarters of the Defence Colony and the high compound walls of a government school.

The Maya Bazaar slum in Vannarpet has not been provided even basic toilet facilities. Venkatamma, a manual labourer, is cooking lunch while her three scantily-clothed children play in the dirty stream that flows past her tiny house. She says, “Many people here have built their own toilets. But my husband and I earn only Rs. 1,500 a month, and of that Rs. 600 goes for rent.”

She leaves the children at home when she goes to work. “By the time I return, they would have defecated right here. People around scream at us for the filth, but what do I do?”

Of the 5,000 or so families in Shastrinagar and Rajendranagar slums located near the National Games Village in Koramangala, only 25 per cent have individual toilets. “But they are of no use as the sanitary lines are always clogged. Only some who have illegally connected lines to the adjoining open storm water drain are lucky,” Amruthraj of the local Dr. B.R. Ambedkar Youth Welfare Association points out.

L. Vimala, Fareeda, Sultana, Puspha and R. Kamalamma are embarrassed to use open areas for their daily ablutions. “But we have no other go. Though the authorities have promised us individual toilets, that is still a distant dream. Why should we pay and use the dirty community toilet?” Sultana says.

All these women have a makeshift bathroom (a space outside the house covered with old mats or plastic sheets on four sides) with no outlet for the water to drain out.