To Pee or Not To Pee

So, during my morning run a few days ago, I got flashed by a man.

At first, I assumed he was peeing in public, in the park where I go for my morning run. Dawn was just breaking with the sun yet to come up and the light was pleasantly dim. I looked away. But as I approached him - he was right in my way- he slowly turned towards me and flashed his penis at me. I was outraged, and I felt violated.

I've ticked off men peeing in public before. I make a pointed comment, "is this a public toilet?" to men hunched against walls in all kinds of public spaces, along a road, in a park, what-have-you. Not sure how much it helps but my hope is maybe the person will not repeat the offence, at least for a while, though of course, I have no way of knowing.
I was still making up my mind whether to go ahead with it, when he precipitated the situation and I was too dumbfounded to do speak. I looked away and walked off.

My first instinct was to go up to the private security guard a little distance away and report it to him. However, anticipating a not very helpful reaction from the guy, and knowing it would only make me angrier at the situation, I walked home, upset.

This is a call every woman has to make at various points in time, almost on a daily basis, specially when negotiating public spaces. All kinds of creeps are out there harassing you. How you react to each incident affects how the rest of your day will go. It entails lost time and energy, if you choose to make a complaint. That's assuming there's someone in authority willing to even hear you out, let alone act upon it, and to to your benefit. It also involves allowing a stranger to determine your mood- you are bound to become angrier as you discuss this and have to explain exactly how the situation arose.

But I digress. My thoughts here are prompted by something more mundane : public toilets , or the lack of them. I go for my morning run, the Rabindra Sarobar in Kolkata which is open to the public. In a public space spread over an area of 73 acres (300,00 sq m) of you'd expect at least a few toilets. Guess how many are there? Not one. Wonder whether the Kolkata Improvement Trust is aware of this or has even given it a thought. It would seem like common sense to me.

Had there been easily available toilets in public spaces, hopefully men would not be let off so easily for relieving themselves in public, either to urinate or for urges best restricted to private spaces.

So although one may outrage at men peeing in public, the fact remains that without a valid option, what is a man to do? Till such time as the government provides more options for the public to relieve themselves, the recent drive to send people to jail for relieving themselves in public can only be seen as a piecemeal effort. Not much will be achieved from such drives.

There's a laudatory effort undertaken by a lone woman Mayuri Bhattacharjee who is going around our city checking out loos  for our benefit.
Of course, we don't regularly come across women peeing in the open, for some strange reason. Wonder why? 

Swaccha Bharat for the Pure

The Prime Minister kicked off Swaccha Bharat cleaning drive at Valmiki Nagar, home to "safai karmacharis" or sanitation workers. Perhaps the high visibility event was supposed to make us think that the PM cares about the people in whose midst he chose to perform a token sweeping. The plight of sanitation workers in our country, sadly, could do with more concrete acts of the government, rather than such empty gestures. 

Most of the sanitation workers belong to the lower castes and they live lives of stigma, in localities named after their caste. They continue to live segregated from upper caste people who are supposed to be "pure".

 

One of the underlying tenets of Hinduism is the concept of purity. The caste system followed by Hindus is based on this concept. The people of higher castes are supposed to be "dwija" or "twice born" as they are supposed to have earned merit in previous births and so are deemed more pure than others. Following the same logic, the lowest castes are the most impure.

The excreta of the body too is part of the impurity. So anything related to excretion is dirty, impure. It is the reason people go to the fields while constructed toilets in homes lie unused. Or that indescribable horror of humanity, the dry latrines located at the backs of homes, in which people defecate and leave their shit for others people - mostly women- to carry and dispose of it. Invariably the people doing this belong to "lower" caste. 

The dry latrines are located at the backs of homes so the women of the house don't need to venture out of the homes, keeping their "honour" intact. This false sense of honour is also why mostly  women are employed to access the dry latrines. These beliefs are the reason sanitation drives are failing. We need to work from the base upwards, to try to change these mind sets. 

Sanitation workers begin their work where our contact with our own waste ends-in the toilet. These jobs remain hazardous and underpaid while tainting those who perform these tasks with life long stigma, which generations of workers are unable to overcome. 

Any intentions of bringing about real change of a Swachcha Bharat must begin with a genuine attempt at changing the lives of the sanitation workforce. 

Basic safety practices should be undertaken by following protocols for safety gear and equipment.  Medical cover while working, education for their children and habitable housing should be provided. Alternative sources of livelihood  should also be provided. The law against manual scavenging enacted for this purpose need to be implemented fully. 

Though the central government has been funding the construction of rural toilets since 1999,   

census 2011 data shows that 43 % Govt toilets are missing or defunct in India. Simply stating goals and allocating resources alone will not do. Unless the government works to find and plug the loopholes these missing funds will continue to bleed out. 

The Swachcha Bharat Abhiyan is hopefully more than a renaming of the last government's scheme and some fanfare and photo ops for the Prime Minister!  India the land does not need as much cleaning as do the minds of the people. Swachcha Bharat will not be brought about by hashtags and photo ops alone, Mr. Prime Minister!