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“…The men were defecating in the open like a defensive wall in front of the slum, making a line that no respectable human should cross. The wind wafted the stench of fresh shit toward me… These people were building homes for the rich, but they lived in tents covered with blue tarpaulin sheets, and partitioned into lanes by lines of sewage. It was even worse than Laxmangarh… The stench of faeces was replaced by the stronger stench of industrial sewage…”
The above passage is from Aravind Adiga’s The White Tiger (2008), a novel set partially in the Delhi NCR area, that made waves almost two decades ago. The passage is worth revisiting today for providing an entry point into the long and complex history of Open Defecation (OD) in India.
At the core, the novel reveals the ravages of social climbing, corruption, and ambition in a capitalist society. The unflinching portrayal of the city’s mercenary ethos, and the rise and fall of the “Everyman” chauffeur from Dhanbad, unsettles us deeply. But more importantly, its stark realism and visceral depiction of the metropolis-in-the-making feel intensely provocative. The book, for lack of a better word, seemed like an exposé when it came out.
Having first studied the novel in an American classroom where I was the only Indian, I was resentful of the author for being utterly irrelevant to the growing international dialogue around “developing India” and for subsequently winning the Booker Prize for it. The White Tiger could not be ignored then, nor can it be ignored now. Nearly two decades on, the novel is more immediate: Adiga’s slum with “tents covered with blue tarpaulin sheets” could stand in for any slum in India today; the “open sewers” are a permanent motif in the urban landscape, and the stench of faeces is the scent of the city in early mornings.
Of germs and latrines: a sanitary awakening in British India
OD is not a contemporary urban problem, nor is it only a modern sanitary challenge for India. Understanding, preventing and eliminating OD has been a centuries-old struggle that became newly conspicuous beginning in the nineteenth century when it was first linked to the transmission of cholera, and consequently, flagged as a public health concern. At this time, conservancy, human waste disposal methods, caste biases, and public health and hygiene became drawn into the emergent sanitary discourse.
This occurred in the context of a massive sanitary revolution in India following the devastating waves of cholera that swept the subcontinent, expanding to pandemic levels after spilling overseas. Amid a growing sanitary consciousness, a Sanitary Commission was established in 1859, primarily to examine the health conditions of the military troops after the severe death toll during the 1857 rebellion. The Crimean War, before that, had also witnessed a high death rate among the British troops due to poor health and hygiene conditions. During this time, ten times more soldiers died of diseases, such as typhus, typhoid, cholera, and dysentery, than from battle wounds.
In general, a strengthened public health and sanitary mechanism was required to support the increasing colonialist activities in the subcontinent, especially trade and travel. More importantly, the colony had to be made fit for inhabitation for the Europeans. For this, sanitary improvements were necessary to make India safe and salubrious. In a way, therefore, public health concerns shaped sanitary policies, while each epidemic uniquely shaped the sanitary interventions in India.
Not that things were any better in England. Flush toilets were uncommon, even in the West, as late as mid-century. It was in the 1840s that the government declared that every new house must have a water-closet or ash-pit privy. In 1858, an abominable stench of human excreta rose up from the River Thames and built up in the city of London in an episode that became known as the “Great Stink”. The ancient metropolis lacked proper infrastructure to support the boom in industry. To make matters worse, the popularisation of flush toilets only made things worse as even more cesspools of feculence gushed into the river daily.
Before the “germ theory”, the Victorians were intensely worried by the “miasmas” that were then believed to cause diseases. Dickens’ representation of the filthy streets of London, with its miasmatic fogs and pestilential muck, comes to mind:
“Fog everywhere. Fog up the river, where it flows among green aits and meadows; fog down the river, where it rolls defiled among the tiers of shipping and the waterside pollution of a great (and dirty) city… Fog in the eyes and throats of ancient Greenwich pensioners, wheezing by the firesides of their wards; fog in the stem and bowl of the afternoon pipe of the wrathful skipper, down in his close cabin; fog cruelly pinching the toes and fingers of his shivering little ’prentice boy on deck.”
The urgency of addressing the matter of safe human-waste disposal became more pronounced following John Snow’s breakthrough research that linked cholera with contaminated water. Robert Koch’s discovery of the Comma Bacillus (later, Vibrio cholerae), marking it as the causal agent of cholera infection, created further transformations in disease control methods. But it was clear that India would remain epidemic-prone so long as practices such as open defecation prevailed.
Thus, with the threat of epidemics looming perennially over the subcontinent, the importance of improving the ordinary conservancy (dry collection and disposal of faecal waste) also emerged. By mid-century, scientific knowledge of diseases and their aetiology had strengthened considerably. The importance of overhauling human waste disposal systems became a matter of urgency as cholera epidemics were linked to contamination with faecal matter. Hitherto, the systems were rudimentary, and open defecation was the norm. This was a major hurdle in the sanitary measures undertaken by the British administration in India.
However, the administration was fully aware that for them to survive in an epidemic-prone country, they needed to safeguard themselves against contagion wherever possible. Accordingly, the government became willing to take extra measures to avoid triggering country-wide epidemics. However, there were many factors to consider, because the problem was not specific to urban and rural sanitation. For instance, contagious diseases were also known to follow mass gatherings of travellers. Cholera epidemics, for instance, emerged during religious events and fairs when the weak, starving and sickly gathered in hordes, after having travelled long distances, and lived together in cramped and insanitary conditions. They also ate, drank, and defecated together in overcrowded spaces with no conservancy facilities.
According to the Sixth Annual Report of the Sanitary Commissioner (ARSC) of the Government of India for 1867-68, strict sanitary rules were imposed on every pilgrim. Constructing proper conservancy facilities for such large crowds would not have been possible, so dry earth was to be used as a deodoriser, and all the filth was buried in trenches or burnt in furnaces erected for the purpose. Latrines were provided where it was convenient, but they consisted only of screened trenches, two feet apart.
Yet, the fourth cholera pandemic of the nineteenth century began in the Delta Ganges of Bengal, in the 1860s, and travelled with Muslims to Mecca (and onwards to Europe, Russia, North America, etc.), claiming the lives of thousands of pilgrims.
If OD became newly identified as one of the leading causes of epidemics, it did not follow that it was always known to be a social evil that needed reforms. Historically, OD has not been associated with shame, poverty, or poor hygiene. It was a socially established practice, not necessarily linked to class or caste, and even affluent sections of society preferred it to using privies or communal toilets.
However, under the British, major strides were made in the city of Calcutta with respect to the sewage system and water supply. Along with this, the human waste disposal system also changed, as mehtars were instructed to empty the night soil into the sewers. Municipal latrines and bathing platforms were also constructed in various public spaces, like railway stations, which were also connected to the sewers.
In Bombay, solid human waste matter was usually scooped up by hand and carried away in baskets by sweepers and nightmen from communal latrines and privies. The government faced numerous problems in maintaining public toilets. Apart from the issue of cleanliness, the toilets would often be located on the outskirts of urban settlements and were generally inaccessible. Women were uncomfortable using the toilets because they would be filthy, and there would be no privacy there either. Moreover, the issue of caste pollution made most averse to using these facilities.
In 1910, it was observed that Indians did not like touching the handle of flush toilets in public conveniences because it would be touched by people of other castes. India has a unique history of practising caste-based untouchability, manifestations of which continue even today. A study published in 2024 stated that, despite the frequent assumption of urban observers that rural Indians must find open defecation embarrassing or unpleasant, OD is not only socially acceptable in places where almost everyone does it, but it is also seen as a wholesome activity that is associated with health, strength, and masculine vigour.
While the outward solution would have been to construct toilets, several caste-based prejudices prevented people from adopting latrines for fear of pollution. Indeed, the long and complex history of tackling OD in India reveals that, despite various sanitary campaigns, OD did not disappear. This is not simply because of the absence of toilets – a problem that could have been solved through infrastructural improvements. The persistence of OD results from a complex entwinement of social practices, caste and class prejudices, backward notions of hygiene, access to resources, in addition to habit, shaped over a long past. This is likely one of the leading reasons why modern campaigns, however ambitious, have not been able to solve the problem.
Toilets for all?
The White Tiger came at a time when there was a renewed zeal around sanitation in public spaces. The novel’s reference to OD, therefore, appears retrospectively striking, given the rhetoric around toilets that emerged with the massive campaign of the “Swachh Bharat Abhiyan”, just a few years after the book’s release.
This Abhiyan, unlike any other, was extraordinary for its ambition to revolutionise sanitation in India with an unlikely agenda: latrines for all. The promise of a “sampoorna swach” India was a powerful one, and the cause was noble despite the mundanness of the means. Perhaps the gradiosity lay in the idea that a centuries-old practice could be eliminated with one concerted effort. A 2006 study had revealed that 48 per cent of the total Indian population defecated in the open, and India ranked among the first 12 countries practising open defecation. The census of 2011 had indicated that 5.2 per cent of households lacked toilet facilities in the city of Bengaluru alone. But Prime Minister Narendra Modi was optimistic despite the challenges. In a span of a few years, over a hundred million toilets were constructed. India was declared Open Defecation Free within five years of the launch of the mission.
However, OD prevails despite the availability of toilets in slums. The mere provision of the infrastructure did not necessarily guarantee the elimination of the practice. According to currently available estimates, the majority of the population that defecates in open belongs to India, amounting to a whopping sixty per cent. Any neighbourhood sharing a side with a slum will know the reality. Those living in high-rises overlooking slums or construction areas might get a full view of the early-morning squatters. This poses uncomfortable questions on the reality of “Swachta” prevalent today, because the question remains: why are the great outdoors still preferred in India?
Indeed, studies reveal that the state of toilet facilities in India, particularly those available for the urban poor, is in doldrums. Those who resort to OD, therefore, either belong to underserved communities or belong to vulnerable classes. Although the cause may be a lack of sanitary consciousness or even a matter of preference in rural areas, in urban areas, the reasons might be more structural or a practice rooted in compulsion. A 2020 Report by the Centre for Water and Sanitation states, “Public agencies often cite lack of space, finance and sewerage access as reasons for not being able to make individual household toilets available for the urban poor. However, these constraints can be addressed if there is a strong intent by both the households and the government, and appropriate measures are adopted”.
Nevertheless, the toilet systems in India have evolved over the past few decades, and the state of affairs has improved gradually. According to the WASH Forward Conclave Report of India, 2022, the Swachh Bharat Mission of 2014 made significant sanitary improvements across the country. As far as toilets in rural areas are concerned, more than 100 million toilets have been constructed since 2014. The data from WASH reveals that OD has indeed been consistently decreasing and has reduced by 2/3rds. The Joint Monitoring Program Report of UNICEF states that India is responsible for the largest drop in open defecation since 2015, in terms of absolute numbers. In 2019, Prime Minister Narendra Modi declared India to be open defecation-free (ODF).
The latest WASH records reveal that India still has an OD percentage of 15%. This report states that India is committed to the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) of 6.1 and 6.2, which focus on bringing access to adequate and equitable sanitation to all by 2030, as well as eliminating OD.
Seen in this light, the raw portrayal of OD in The White Tiger captures the persistence of a practice and reveals social, political and infrastructural limitations of modern India, which have allowed it to remain one of the most enduring social ills that have withstood numerous campaigns for elimination.
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