Posted on 06/21/2014 4:12:25 AM PDT by Altura Ct.
It's early morning and local commuters are queuing up for tickets at the Kirti Nagar railway station in the Indian capital, Delhi.
Along the tracks, another crowd is gathering - each person on his own, separated by a modest distance. They are among the 48% of Indians who do not have access to proper sanitation.
Coming from a slum close-by, they squat among the few trees and bushes along the railway tracks and defecate in the open.
To many, this is a daily morning ritual despite the hazards of contracting diseases such as diarrhoea and hepatitis.
It can be even more hazardous for women since each time a woman uses the outdoors to relieve herself, she faces a danger of sexual assault.
Recently two teenage girls from the state of Uttar Pradesh were gang-raped and found hanging from a tree after they left their village home to go to the toilet. Their house, like hundreds of millions of others in the country, did not have any facilities. 'No privacy'
A new World Health Organisation (WHO) report says more than half a billion people in India still "continue to defecate in gutters, behind bushes or in open water bodies, with no dignity or privacy".
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.com ...
I had no idea. I work with people from there, I don’t know if I can not think about this when talking to them. God have mercy.
Too funny - we are house hunting right now and we gave the realtor the same criteria last month.
Kenyans?
I’ve seen some ugly things over the years, but nothing on that scale they live with everyday.
There is nothing so-called elites or upper castes can do to force behavior changes of certain section of people. If lower castes, as a matter of politics, refuse to become educated, abuse public toilets so nobody else can use them, politicize any kind of sanitary work, not much can be done to change their attitudes or sanitary conditions. Sanitary public work is so much politicized that not many people are willing to work as sanitation workers, and those who do, refuse to do any cleaning work. India tried building lots of public toilets but within months, they were so filthy that nobody would be willing to use them or clean them
India experimented with socialism giving political focus exclusively on welfare of lower castes, but it only ended up enlarging and empowering the impoverishment. Do you think American style welfare state is capable of moving hundreds of millions of people out of need and dependence on government welfare programs - will not India be trading one serious problem with many more serious ones? Does India has that kind of wealth-creating economic engine to institute European style welfare state? If simply throwing money could have solved this problem, It would have been solved many decades ago.
The sanitation issue is more political than cultural. Guess what, British ruled India for 150yrs and they could not solved it either. In fact, the political issues involved in sanitation stalemate are a British legacy. Politicization of Sanitation originated during British Raj, and past rulers intesified it.
The new non-socialist administration has started in earnest to clean up rivers and modernize infrastructure. Socialists had 60years to clean it up, new administration has asked for only 10years.
I figure 5% of the population is working the "calling you to help fix your computer" scam.
“I like your tagline.”
Thanks. I’ve got the bumper stickers too.
I like your about page. You have been truly blessed. I lived in NC four years, New Bern area. We loved it.
God Bless.
Its easy to generalize and stereotype based on what a small percentage of population does - because even 10% of 1.25 billion would be so large a number that it can easily cloud and overwhelm perceptions and narrative. In India, like any where else that big and diverse, you can always find whatever you choose to look for, not in small measure but in overwhelming abundance. None of it is the only truth and none of it matters in the end.
Its not such much cultural as it is so much political, as no sanitary worker wants to clean anything and nothing can be done about it, their work being politicized. So even when public toilets are built, they become unusable within few months. You can build all the public sanitation facilities in the world, but if they can not get cleaned by cleaning staff or any sanitation standards be enforced because of politicization, there is no incentive for public sanitization. India will have to wait till new political regime that can overcome politicization of sanitation work.
I have seen dumps on sidewalks of London on several occasions, especially during rains - when somebody must have thought the rain would wash it away and nobody would notice it!
In London, the row-houses have inadequate toilet facilities, and especially in morning, when more than one person is likely to have need to use toilet urgently, what can they do to alleviate? You can imagine how this daily issue is handled by millions of households in London.
“People from India are the newest liberal victim group. I’m not sure how that happened or why... because there aren’t that many Indians living in the United States.”
There are a lot of them here in NJ (and more every day). They get no special treatment, because the gibsmedats vilify them for operating convenience stores in welfare neighborhoods (gibsmedats think they should just be given the stores, or worse, want someone else to operate them and give everything to them for free).
That’s the way they did it when I was in RVN...what are you going to do? It’s a force of nature, that’s why every single day I thank God for running water and plumbing.
We have so much to be thankful for.
“I live in the Northeast and that is new to me also. Disgusting.”
How about going to a mall in northern NJ and watching the men take off sandals and try on various shoes without the “foot condoms”? Gross...
I’ve never been there. One of my daughters has a summer camp job in Washington, NC, and she and my husband spent several weekends there during the spring. She had training for the job, while he tourized the Outer Banks and surrounding area.
Maybe someday I’ll see it.
Yuk ! That wasn’t even allowed years ago but that’s when we had real customer service,not the self-service we are stuck with these days.
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India’s very large population, and a big segment of that living in extreme poverty and without proper homes mean that these kind of problems will exist and are magnified because of the large population. There is also need for attitude changes among the very poor.
In the 1950s and 60s America used to talk about how overpopulation and diversity made India a hell hole, today America's multi-cultural, multi-language, multi relgious population is close to what India's was in 1960.
I could have added that the mess on the floor next to the toilet was likely made by an immigrant from a country not associated with western culture.
We have a large Somali population in our town. It may have been a newly arrived woman who did this. Either they have never seen a ‘western toilet seat’, or just don’t care.
What are the inadequacies of London bathrooms?
Honestly I don’t believe that drivel. That may be what immigration reform brings to the USA but that is not the way it was 20 years ago and doesn’t bode well for the future.
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