No Toilet, No Bride!!

It was morning 6:30am and I was looking through the newspaper. An article drew my attention. A part of the article heading was “No toilet, no bride“. It sounded little interesting which tempted me to go through the whole article. The article reserved its space in the top of the second page of “THE HINDU” dated “November 19, 2014”.

“Shochalaya nahin toh dulhan nahin [No toilet, no bride]”. This is the slogan raised by women from Alwar and Kota in Rajasthan, who joined the International Toilet Festival at Delhi on November 18. Most of these women, who became manual scavengers after marriage, have removed human excreta on tin plates carried on their heads for more than a decade. Seema, a 30-year-old woman from Alwar, says she was forced to clean toilets after her marriage. She used to vomit and remain unwell due to the work that was the source of her livelihood. [Source: THE HINDU, November 19, 2014]

I had seen a fantastic initiative @indiblogger, a Happy Hour Campaign on the topic “Toilet for Babli“, where they were accepting blog posts which would encourage the idea of “A click for a cleaner and safer India“, through a collaborative program with Domex as “You Click Domex Contributes“. I thought of writing a post on this on the same day but the busy schedule did not permit me to do the same. While going through the article “No toilet, no bride“, the idea of posting my thoughts on the topic @IgEn reappeared in my mind.

A report on “The Times of India” on July 8, 2012 stated a fact “It’s easier to find cellphone coverage in the most backward villages of India than a proper toilet“. The survey at that time showed 626 million people in the country – the highest in the world – didn’t have a closed toilet and consequently practiced open defecation. Though according to the current survey the number reduced to 597 million. But still a long way to go for a healthy India. Again a Bloomberg News @businessweek on November 19, 2014 presents in a report “10 million child deaths attributed to a lack of toilets“. Because of open defecation, people live in unhygienic space, contamination from human waste and dirty water. In the same above businessweek report, it has been highlighted that “The WHO estimates that 88 percent of diarrheal mortality among the young can be attributed to a lack of access to sanitation, clean water and hygiene”. Professor Jayati Ghosh from the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) pointed an issue “Open defecation not just an assault on human dignity but also a physical threat to women“. With the proof support to Professor Ghosh statement, the attention of world was drawn by an incident earlier in this year “when two girls from a village in Uttar Pradesh were gang-raped and hanged from a tree after they went outside to defecate”.

In this 21^st century, in our country, where the interviews are conducted through Skype, birthday messages are sent through Wahtsapp, dinners are declared to be as Pizza party, printing tattoos on arm known as fashion, would have no meaning and most importantly the “Swachh Bharat Abhiyan” would not be a success, if half of the country’s population have to go outside for open defecation. The country needs a change!!