Tuesday, May 30, 2017

No More “Pity” in “Pit Emptying”!


Frankly speaking, earlier I had reservations about pit emptying and always considered human shit as a potential environmental liability and after doing pit emptying myself; now my own reservations and inhibitions are the things of the past and I am assured that this one is a very potent solution for the many of the sanitation woes”, said Temsutala Imsong after doing pit emptying, arranged as a part of "Shramdaan Conclave" in Raipur district. Temsutala Imsong, who hails from Nagaland, is known for her organization Sakaar Sewa Samiti work in the field on sanitation and community participation in Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh and has done extraordinary and incredible work in the cleaning of “ghats”; is a conveyor of #Shramdaan India, a group working for Clean India in different parts of the country. “Shram” meaning “Labour” and “Daan” meaning “Donate”, hence Shramdaani can be called as volunteers devoted to specific cause.
#ShramdaanIndia is a group of volunteers working for Clean India Mission, in different cities in India. Shrasmdaan Conclave was second such conclave organized to encourage community participation and cross learning between different groups. As a part of the conclave, pit emptying activity was planned to challenge the age old stigma and taboo associated with it which proved to be a huge success.  
While smelling the manure, after doing pit emptying, Monika Tiwari a member of Samarprit Parivar, also a software engineer by profession, based in Vidisha, Madhya- Pradesh asked, “Is this really shit manure? It does not look like shit. It’s totally like soil or any other manure like Vermi-Compost”. Many participating volunteers (which were from different organizations like Bhopal I-Clean, Green Minds, Paryavaran Dost, Change India Foundation, Bunch of fools and many more) were involved in pit emptying to carry forward the pit emptying momentum, generated after pit emptying  done by Secretary, Ministry of Drinking Water and sanitation (MoDWS).
Many sanitation experts like Dean Spears, Diane Coffey and Sangita Vyas always suggested that pit emptying must become central to India’s efforts to eliminate open defecation. Study reveals that the rural population of India does not usually accept the low cost sanitation solution like leach pit as people think that bigger septic tanks are better as there will be no problem in emptying. People try to construct septic tanks as big as it is possible so that one will not have to empty the septic tank in lifetime which will atleast be more durable till the next generations to come. This leads to an increase in the construction cost of toilets. Though Government of India promotes low cost solutions like leach pit and provides an incentive of twelve thousand rupees (Two Hundred US dollar), people generally prefer septic tank which is actually, what Robert Chambers call it as a lose-lose-lose proposition, costly to build, nasty, expensive to empty, and used only partially.  Masons are generally unaware, uninformed and ignorant about the usefulness of leach pit and also sometimes to generate more work for themselves and in turn more profit, knowingly promote septic tanks.
“I actually thought that the silliest thing that I am doing is to do pit emptying because manual emptying process of manure is taken as abomination. In reality, “shit manure” is just like a soil. Now I believe that a leach pit toilet is very easy to construct and simple to maintain, it’s very cost effective and in fact women Self Help Group (SHGs) are showing the way to earn from shit too”, said by Haresh Shah from Making A difference Foundation placed in Mumbai. He is also doing a pioneering work in beautification of railway stations in sub urban areas of Mumbai. 
Somatya from Shashi Foundation, Lucknow (Uttar Pradesh), a group working for making places clean and green was very enthusiastic about pit emptying as such a work was never done before. After participating and knowing about shit manure, she was convinced that pit emptying is the best way of fecal sludge management and that shit manure is far better than other chemical fertilizers and opinioned that this activity should be replicated on other parts of country.
Many Sarpanch's (elected village representatives) along with other village people are promoting pit emptying activity and are spreading awareness about it. Sarpanch's of Gram Panchayat Raikheda, Chhatoud, Chicholi, Gaitara, Sarfonga, Mohada and many more are actively involved in pit emptying and are challenging the age old beliefs of purity and caste biases!
Without a doubt, the pit emptying activity will challenge the age old caste based biases and manual scavenging. Manual scavenging in India is officially defined as ‘lifting and removal of human excreta manually’, at private homes and toilets maintained by municipal authorities. The practice consists of gathering human excreta from individual or community dry latrines with bare hands, brooms or metal scrapers into woven baskets or buckets. Manual scavenging is considered as one of the lowest, polluted and most degrading occupations.  Though, according to the Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation Act, which made the employment of manual scavengers illegal, emptying human waste that has decomposed in a latrine pit is not considered as manual scavenging, and is therefore not illegal.
In Raipur district of Chhattisgarh, the methodology of Community-Led Total Sanitation is to make Gram Panchayat Open Defecation Free and now at different occasions, pit emptying activities are done to make people aware about the simplicity associated with pit emptying. Women Self Help Groups (SHGs) are selling ‘shit manure’ named as Sona Khad under Bihaan Bazzar. People belonging to different caste, creed and religion are ready to do pit emptying and are proudly posting it in on different social media platforms.
Pit emptying is a basic riddle is not very easy to solve. Combined with notions of purity, caste, myths of hygiene, incorrect perception, biases, prejudices, notions and wrong concepts, it will surely require sustained efforts by very stakeholders to make pit emptying as “new normal”. It is, therefore, rightly argued that pit emptying must be central to India’s effort to end open defecation.
Nileshkumar Kshirsagar (IAS) is the CEO Jila Panchayat Raipur, Chhattisgarh.
DATE: 3 MAY 2017
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India

Wednesday, May 3, 2017

Making shit a commodity: finding a fortune at the bottom of a leach pit


Leach pit emptying events should not remain stand-alone activity. Forward and backward linkages in making manure a commodity bought, sold and traded in market will be very much helpful in shifting preference to leach pits and issue of partial usage can be tackled and will be surely a win-win situation for all stakeholders.
Robert Chambers, Jamie Myers and I, with our field staff, recently dug a leach pit in the Gram Panchayat Sarfonga of Raipur District following the footsteps of Secretary, Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation (MoDWS). One household, where the head of the family, Mr. Dhaja Ram Sahu was unaware of the treasure beneath his own land, constructed septic tank for his family costing around seventy thousand rupees; because he thought it’s easier to construct a new toilet than emptying leach pit!  When offered a price for his fertilizer he was surprised to know the value for the same. Although there is a proactive campaign going on by government, septic tank remains the choice of the common man. In reality a ‘fortune’ lies at the bottom of the leach pit and “commoditization” of human shit can be one of the ways to encourage people to construct leach pits.
Shiv-Sakti a women Self Help Group (SHG), located in Gram Panchayat Beldar Shivani, in Tilda block of Raipur District,Chhattisgarh is selling manure generated from human shit as Bihan Sona Khad, in Bihan Bazar of Raipur. (Bihaan is a Chhattisgarhi word which means dawn and is the of the Chhattisgarh State Rural Livelihood Mission. Sona Khad means manure generated from human shit). Bihaan Sona Khad is priced around fifty rupees, for a kilogram, slightly less than one US dollar, and in this way the SHGs are trying to turn “shit” into a commodity.
According to the Cambridge dictionary, the meaning of the term ‘commodity’ is ‘a substance or product that can be traded, bought, or sold.’ The best way to encourage people to construct leach pits and to use toilets is to make ‘shit’ a commodity that can be traded, sold and bought in the open market. With organic food and organic fertilizers gaining currency in recent days, shit manure can be successfully promoted.
Construction of a septic tank, though a preferred approach in India, is actually a lose-lose-lose proposition:  it’s costlier to build, it’s more time consuming and an expensive method to empty it. Partial usage of the septic tank toilet is also one of the tricky issues: to avoid filling of the septic tanks, which is seen as liability, family prefers to defecate in the open. Leach-pit technology as promoted by the Indian Government is a win-win-win situation for the all concerned stakeholders in the true sense. Using leach pit is an investment- the more shit deposited, the more generation of manure for sale. It’s actually like Systemic Investment Plan (SIP). Still, septic tanks is often desired by people due to various reasons, for example due to the ill-conceived notion of leach pits as Sarkari, ie sub-standard. A toilet is a life time investment and thus it is conceived that the bigger the tank the better it will be.  Another reason is that masons are not aware of leach pit techniques.
On 20th February, 2017 an orientation program on sanitation and CLTS was conducted by Jila Panchayat, Raipur, Chhattisgarh in collaboration with Action for Better Tomorrow (ABTS) and supported by UNICEF Chhattisgarh at Raipur and Bunch of Fools (BoF), a local NGO involved in urban sanitation. Manure recently excavated by field staff from a leach pit was shared with the participants. The participants had not been told about the type of manure. But when told about the type of manure, all the participants were surprised. Many were not hesitant to touch, smell and handle the leach pit manure. They even agreed on digging a filled leach pit in coming days and an intense activity at field level has been planned for the same.
It can be argued that turning shit-manure into commodity may be difficult. But it can be noted that a few years earlier, in Chhattisgarh, there was an immense environmental problem of fly ash generated due to power plants in Chhattisgarh, which is the power hub of India. Power plants were ready to provide fly ash for free but there were no buyers. Industries used to dump this waste at any obscure location. Later, the government of Chhattisgarh made fly ash bricks compulsory for all government buildings and also units for manufacturing of fly ash bricks were put under priority sector under Chhattisgarh Industrial Policy, so easy finance and capital subsidy was made available. The result of these policy interventions is that fly ash which was considered as waste turned to be a most sought commodity - a win-win situation for all. Similarly, the right kind of policy intervention, sustained efforts and dedicated IEC for pit emptying, perception management, forward and backward linkages, communication strategy for the behavior change, promotion of organic fertilizers can make human shit manure a commodity.
C K Prahalad, Management Guru, and author of the book The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty through Profits elaborated on how MNCs can generate profits by  focusing on the needs of the Bottom of Pyramid (BoP) to create fortune for themselves and also the poor sections of society. In the same way, it can be said that, fortune lies at the bottom of a leach pit and we need to harness and exploit the great potential that is there for the betterment of humanity.
Nileshkumar Kshirsagar (IAS) is the CEO of Jila Panchayat Raipur and Sukanya Kalita Vaiphei Alumnus of Lady Shri Ram College and interested in behavior change and sanitation.
DATE: 14 MARCH 2017
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