The most basic human right

rama
Background
“A very creditable achievement, of which you can be justifiably proud.”
Thus concluded Dr Yusuf Samiullah, Engineering Adviser, Department for International Development (DFID) of the UK govt, in late-1997. He had just completed an inspection tour of environmental improvement works in slum clusters of Howrah, the historically neglected, and now-blighted industrial city across the river from Calcutta, India.
This work was done through a community-based pilot project. The objective of the project was to initiate and demonstrate community participation in taking up much-needed local environmental improvement tasks; and to derive lessons on the opportunities and difficulties confronting such efforts, so as to enable appropriate re-structuring of municipal infrastructure projects.
This pilot project was being taken up as the concluding part of the work of the Social Development group within the Calcutta Environmental Management Strategy & Action Plan (CEMSAP), a project of the state govt. of West Bengal in India, supported by the DFID. The role of the project’s social development group had been to study the impact of environmental degradation in metropolitan Calcutta on the poor, low income and vulnerable sections; and to develop strategies and action plans to address their environmental needs and priorities within city environmental improvement programmes.
The group was instrumental in emphasising that lack of access to adequate supplies of drinking water, compounded by highly inadequate sanitation, was the key environmental problem confronting Calcutta. It was pointed out that the impact of this fell disproportionately on the poor and low income. And that this was a result of the overall disempowered status of such communities. A Community Environmental Management Strategy and Programme was therefore developed and written, which called for the re-design of conventional civic infrastructure projects so as to integrate active participation of the affected communities and their grassroots organisations. The pilot project in Howrah slums was an important means towards taking such action to the ground. Three wards under the Howrah Municipal Corporation, with large slum populations, were assigned for conducting the project.
Several months before his inspection visit, Dr Samiullah had attended a meeting with councillors and officials from Howrah, and community representatives, to discuss plans and procedures for taking up the pilot project in slum neighbourhoods. Impressed with the enthusiasm and promised cooperation of the councillors and community representatives, Dr Samiullah gave his approval to the proposed project and increased its budget to Rs 1 million.
Over the next 7 months, an intensive process of grassroots action was taken up. Community-level meetings were organised, with poor households, local youth and neighbourhood organisations. Local volunteers were deployed in a range of functions. And ultimately, a number of tubewells (hand-pumps) were installed, a tubewells maintenance squad was organised, broken drains were repaired, and several toilets were constructed. And with the toilets lies a tale.
Service latrines
A ‘service latrine’ is a toilet that has to be manually cleaned out, by lowly sweepers. This is an arrangement that was widespread in old towns and cities across India. The image of a person carrying a basket of excreta on his / her head – had been the subject of a call to conscience by Mahatma Gandhi. But it was only in 1986 that the govt. of India finally enacted a law banning such ‘manual scavenging’. Local bodies had to ensure the implementation of this and a programme was subsequently initiated to provide a subsidy for the conversion of service latrines into sanitary toilets.
In 1993, the welfare ministry (which was responsible for enacting and implementing the Act) undertook a survey of the extent to which the law had been implemented in all the states of India. It was found that even the Chief Secretaries of many major states in the country were unaware of the existence of such a law.
The govt. also introduced a programme to be implemented through the urban local bodies to subsidise the conversion of these service latrines into sanitary toilets. This had been implemented for several years in Howrah. However, there were severe shortcomings in implementation. Service latrines continued to be in use on a massive scale in Howrah, with all the attendant adverse environmental health risks to the community and the conservancy workers (apart from the violation of the latter’s human dignity).
The problem was that in many cases, there were a large number of people using the service latrine. In the slums of Howrah, a plot would typically house 15-20 households, and over 100 persons would be using the latrine, typically a hole in the floor of a small raised cubicle-shed. The govt. subsidy scheme was, however, designed keeping a single (5-7 member) household in view. Septic tanks either did not exist, or were non-functional. The slum plots were congested with the hutments, leaving no spare space. Hence service latrines simply continued to exist and be used.
In some of the worst areas, the service latrines made the neighbourhood extremely foul and dangerous. These were the areas where the incidence of water-borne and gastro-intestinal diseases was high, with high infant mortality and morbidity.
Not surprisingly, it was emphasised by the slum communities and the councillors that proper toilets were the most vital need of the people.
Building cooperation, building toilets
To carry out the pilot project, a team was constituted, under my charge in my capacity as social development coordinator of the CEMSAP project. A field office was set up. Prodyut, a political activist cum social worker from the project area, with strong local roots and contacts, was employed to supervise field activity. Two social development professionals were recruited to handle the documentation and administrative aspects. And a couple of students were assigned field liaison tasks.
As coordinator of the pilot project, I was a possessed soul. After a tour through some of the slum localities, where one had to literally walk over a slush of excreta – I felt a flush of awakening. I felt my moment had arrived. While anybody would run far away from and shun such places – except if they had to live there – I decided to remain there, and address this problem of service latrines, come what may. I felt thrilled by the challenge. The apparent insolubility of the problem, its neglect, the foul environment, the revulsion of officials and authorities to engage with this, the unending rebuttals of habitual prejudice- and conflict-oriented perceptions – one of my senior project colleagues had opined “Decent people don’t go to Howrah” – all this only strengthened my resolve. I became completely alienated from the society and city I had been part of. Everything took on a mystic and mythic aura in my consciousness. The poor slumdweller living amidst excreta became my Daridra Narayan, God in the garb of the poor. I had found my God, in the shit. I had found the meaning and purpose of my life. And nothing was going to stop me. And Prodyut was there beside me, to help me in my work.
Problems, options and priorities were discussed with communities, their elected municipal representatives and Corporation officials. Assumptions and habitual perceptions – based on the existing corrupt and insincere institutional culture – were directed at me as coordinator. But I discerned and cut through all this, with my resolve, commitment and energy. The work was too serious to be left hostage to anybody. The project team was reorganised, and local community volunteers were taken on against a stipend.
The technical solution, under the circumstances, was a twin-pit latrine. This meant knocking down the existing toilet structure, cleaning up the spot, constructing two large, deep brick pits and erecting a multi-seat toilet shed block over the pits. The excreta would flow to one pit; the honey-combed brickwork would enable the liquid matter to be absorbed in the soil. After a year’s use by the dwellers, the first pit would become full. The excreta would then flow to the second pit, while the first pit would remain unused, awaiting organic decomposition of the excreta. After another year, the matter in the first pit would become inert soil, which would be removed and the pit’s re-use begun. The soil would be removed by the dwellers and used or sold as compost. And the second pit would then remain disused for a year; and so on. As the plot was very congested, space had to be created to accommodate the two large pits (needed because of the large number of users). Some huts would have to be shifted.
But it was found that it was clean toilets that the people wanted more than anything else. When it became clear to them that the project team did really intend to construct proper toilets - and had no other agenda besides this – they were prepared to do all they could to get this.
Meetings were held with all the households in each slum plot. Cost estimates were prepared for the proposed sanitary toilets. Households committed voluntary labour for the work and its monitoring. The landlord (principal tenant actually) was asked to contribute Rs 5,000 towards the total cost of each unit. A memorandum of understanding was drawn up and signed by the landlord and head of each household, and counter-signed by the local ward councillor. Local contractors were selected through public tender to carry out the work.
The pilot project budget covered the entire cost of constructing the toilets. But the govt. subsidy, of Rs 5,000 per unit, was to be retained by the project team; and this amount together with the landlords’ contributions was to be used to construct more toilets.
Over a period of less than 3 months, 10 toilet blocks were constructed spread over slum pockets of two municipal wards of Howrah. The maximum cost of a unit – under the eagle eyes of the project staff and slum households - was about Rs 22,000.
The lives of hundreds of people had been positively transformed. And very foul spots, in the midst of the metropolis, were rehabilitated. These toilets are all still in existence, in perfect condition, kept spotlessly clean by the proud slum households.
Howrah Pilot Project
But the story does not end there.
I had been commissioned to undertake research and write an article for a UK journal. As the subject of the article, I decided to focus on the existing degraded situation in a large Muslim slum within the pilot project, and outline a vision for community-led redevelopment. I saw this as a good opportunity to root myself in a specific place, and devote myself to actually initiating long-term community action, instead of thinking about such matters, or researching or writing about it. I worked on this simultaneously with the pilot project, employing slum youth to assist in field surveys and to lay the ground for a long-term intervention.
The pilot project was over and the field office was wound up. All the engineering works were completed on time, using every penny of the allocated budget to do as much as possible.
Inspired and spurred by the success of the project and the bonds of cooperation built up with the slum communities, Prodyut and I formed an independent organisation, Howrah Pilot Project (HPP). This would be based in Priya Manna Basti in Howrah, a century-old jute workers’ settlement, that was now home to some 40,000 people, mainly from labouring, Urdu-speaking, Muslim households. From here we would work with the slumdwellers, as concerned and capable citizens, to rebuild the city from the grassroots. HPP would be an organisation whose existence and work was sustained by civic and community consciousness and ownership.
The fee I received for my article provided the start-up fund for the newly-formed HPP to take up its work. I was also awarded a year’s fellowship which enabled me to devote time to the HPP.
Eliminating service latrines
This was August 1997, and the 50th anniversary of India’s independence. I felt that the best way to commemorate the occasion and to pay homage to the memory of Mahatma Gandhi, the father of the nation, was to work to eliminate service latrines from the slums of Howrah. We had after all found and demonstrated the solution to this apparently insoluble problem, which affected thousands of people, and was responsible for severe environmental health risks. I felt like a scientist who has made an earth-shattering new discovery, expanding the frontiers of knowledge and transforming human life. (As a 11-year old, I had read with rapt awe Eve Curie's biography of Madam Curie which my mother had presented on new year's day in 1972, with the inscribed exhortation: "Go through this book like a book worm & may it inspire you to great deeds.")
Through my close association and collaboration with specialists from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, who had also been part of the CEMSAP project, I was asked to join an international research study on environmental health and the urban poor, looking at Howrah slums. The research budget for this was provided to HPP and with this a full-fledged community empowerment programme, focussing on poor women and children, was initiated in PM Basti. The objective – to nurture and build grassroots capabilities and institutions to lead community upliftment and slum redevelopment.
A service latrine elimination programme was also developed by Howrah Pilot Project. Surveys were conducted in slum pockets. Plot-level meetings with households were organised. It was explained that though the pilot project was over, after the successful demonstration of the conversion of service latrines into sanitary toilets, it was now necessary to enable other similar slum households to also avail of this opportunity. The cost factor was explained. With the necessary cost likely to be about Rs 22-25,000 (in the maximum users case), and Rs 5,000 coming from the govt. subsidy and another Rs 5,000 from the landlord, the remaining Rs 12-15,000 would have to be contributed by the user households. It was suggested that this could be through a credit-financing arrangement with a housing finance company. Each household would begin paying something like Rs 50 per month immediately after the toilet was constructed, and repay for about 15 months.
After substantial effort, a leading housing finance company agreed to support this scheme. The loans would be in the name of Howrah Pilot Project, who would take responsibility for the whole venture. Through the CEMSAP project, I had become acquainted with some of the senior officials of the metropolitan development authority. Hence approval of the metropolitan development authority – who would sanction the release of the govt subsidy - was also obtained. They agreed to make available the subsidy for ten toilet units at a time, in advance, provided the programme was approved by the Howrah Municipal Corporation.
The scheme was detailed and submitted to the Howrah Municipal Corporation. One ward was to be taken up for complete elimination of service latrines in slums. And that would enable an appropriate city-wide scaling-up subsequently. HPP would take up, using its own resources, the crucial community organising role. A request was made to the Corporation for early release to HPP of the subsidy due for the 10 units constructed under the CEMSAP pilot project (as earlier authorised and agreed to), so that the work could be started.
A saga of inaction
Nothing happened.
Despite repeated efforts, over many months, and letters and meetings with officials – the service latrine elimination programme was a non-starter.
Much later, it became clear that this had been simply sabotaged by people within the Corporation. There was a happy and neat arrangement between officials and contractors, to appropriate the subsidy. A bogus toilet would be built – which would be non-functional immediately after. The subsidy was then approved, released and pocketed.
The subsidy for the 10 toilets constructed under the CEMSAP pilot project – remains unpaid. For several years HPP retained the landlords’ contributions, awaiting the Corporation’s approval and payment. Finally this was spent on its other community activities.
After about a year’s inaction, another attempt was launched. A proposal was submitted to the state environment department, in response to its public advertisement inviting proposals from NGOs for environmental projects. Based on the self-financing scheme developed earlier by HPP, this proposal requested modest support to HPP to organise the beneficiary communities, and more importantly, sought the environment department’s influence upon Howrah Corporation to initiate the programme.
Nothing came of that either. Notwithstanding Dr Yusuf Samiullah’s congratulatory feedback, with which this account began. Perhaps it had all been too easy then, happened merely because that was a govt. project and municipal involvement had been formally arranged.
Yet another effort was made a year later, with letters being sent to the 40-odd local bodies within metropolitan Calcutta, offering assistance in taking up service latrine elimination in their respective areas. There was no response, except from a small municipality. When we went there for a discussion, we were ultimately told: we are already doing all that’s necessary, there’s no poverty here, try elsewhere.
The story doesn’t end there either. Much water has flowed under the Howrah bridge since then. In early 2000, after severe flooding in slum neighbourhoods because of the choking of a major high drain in south-central Howrah, HPP initiated a community-led programme to clean and maintain the high drain. Detailed surveys were undertaken, with invited professional specialists assisted by local people. The approval in principle was obtained from officials in the govt. of India, as well as a UN agency, to support such a programme. However, the formal proposal for this support would have to be made by Howrah Corporation.
That is yet to happen. The high drain remains choked. When the situation became critical, some patchwork cleaning was done by the Corporation. A sanitary engineer invited by us who inspected the choked high drain told me: in any civilised society, if this kind of thing existed, it is sufficient basis for an arrest warrant to be issued against the mayor for criminal negligence leading to avoidable deaths and suffering. But here, such things are “normal”.
Conclusion
These are only a few examples from Howrah Pilot Project’s experience of the long, unending experience of denial and disregard from institutions that poor slumdwellers face.
But the work of HPP through its centre in Priya Manna Basti continues. Talimi Haq School, a non-formal school for poor and working children, was started in 1998 and this continues. (Talimi Haq means "Right to Education" in Urdu; and also "Truth is Learning". Al-Haq is one of the names of Allah.) In 1999, the school received a special award as a ‘school that cares’ under the aegis of a city newspaper. In 2003 and again in 2004, children from Talimi Haq School participated in an internet communication project on nature with children from schools in the UK . That enabled them to make many visits to the nearby Botanical Gardens (near the eastern end of the Grand Trunk Road).
A women’s spice-making enterprise has been successfully established, which today supplies a range of specialist spices or masalas (like biryani and chaap masalas) for export to America, Europe and Japan. A few slum youth, boys and girls, have gone through an intensive process of skill and leadership development and grown and matured as human beings. A number of volunteers from Calcutta have worked for varying periods and had a rich, transformative educational experience. A lot of goodwill has been created. The work has inspired similar grassroots efforts in other slum localities of Calcutta and Howrah. The whole programme is managed by trained community-based volunteers and its modest fund requirement are met through donations by the founders and other well-wishers, and occasional small grants.
The endeavour continues. The whole experience has been rich in learning for those involved. HPP is a live laboratory, to yield strategic, experience-based action knowledge on poverty and slum community development.
The CEMSAP pilot project had changed my life and Prodyut’s – but I had been personally reluctant to take this up, because after my failed experience of trying to work with others for social ends, I had implicitly slipped into a loner mode. Thus though I was constantly concerned about social questions, I didn’t actually have any truck with anyone, except inside my heart. In the planning phase of the CEMSAP project, I was working closely with other colleagues, but this was like a partnership, and the work was of an intellectual nature. But now, in the absence of anyone else being available to do this, I had to take up leadership and management of a concrete set of activities at the grassroots, and reach out to and relate in differing ways with diverse people. The crossing of the river, and going to Howrah – transformed my life, something I could never have even imagined just before that. Yet this was only something residing deep within me, the plaintive plea of my soul, that the Almighty entrust a poor Muslim child to me, to love and nurture.
Prodyut and I resolved and committed ourselves to devoting ourselves through HPP to PM Basti, come what may. Our early achievements through the pilot project looked on hindsight to have been deceptively easy. All the struggles during that short venture could not compare with the unending ordeal of institutional disregard that the HPP experience had been an apprenticeship and a harsh trial in. Working in a poor, degraded slum in Howrah, controlled by criminalised political cadre - patience, adaptation, and swallowing of pain is taught continuously.
An honest, selfless, idealistic, sincere social interventionist – is an aberration and a caricature in such an area of darkness. Poverty, conflict, social and environmental injustice – all degrade the human fibre, revealing man’s ugliest facets. But amidst poverty can also be found simplicity, trust, beautiful dreams and aspirations, and goodness, a fertile soil to plant and nurture a small sapling of conviction and responsibility. HPP is a small, quiet, cheerful island of hope in PM Basti.
Postscript
The right to defecate is perhaps the most basic human right, after the right to life. In an urban setting, life requires toilets. And human dignity calls for a hygienic, sanitary toilet. As a woman explained, if one had no food to eat one could go out and beg for some food; but could one beg for a toilet? Not having a decent toilet – made life a never-ending nightmare. Most of all for women. But evidently this is not at all a concern for many. They can carry on, regardless. While human dignity is abused, and little children die.