Toilets & the swachh conundrum

Book review of 'Where India Goes: Abandoned Toilets, Stunted Development and the Costs of Caste'

Where India Goes 

Abandoned Toilets, Stunted Development and the Costs of Caste

Diane Coffey and Dean Spears

HarperCollins

271 pages; Rs 250

This is a development puzzle that economists have struggled to explain: Why, despite growing prosperity, do millions of Indians continue to defecate in the open? 

The 2011 census revealed that a little more than half the country still defecated in the open. In rural areas, the situation was worse, with more than two-thirds still relieving themselves in the open.

Between 2001 and 2011 – the period when India clocked its fastest expansion in modern history – open defecation declined by a mere percentage point in both rural and urban areas.

By comparison, even those in sub-Saharan Africa and other parts of Asia, despite being far poorer than the average rural Indian, use a toilet or latrine. 

So what explains this?

Several theories have been offered but arguably the most convincing explanation comes from economists Dean Spears and Diane Coffey. The two have spent the last few years studying this conundrum in great detail.

In their latest book, Where India Goes, the Princeton-educated economists present their theory in a lucid, easily accessible manner. 

The authors begin by discounting the often touted explanations for this rather unusual behaviour. 

The first, and perhaps the most obvious, explanation is that India is still a poor country. But, as the authors point out, of the 55 countries with a per capita GDP less than that of India, 46 have open defecation rates lower than that of India’s. And, of the 21 countries with a higher fraction of the population living on less than $1.25 a day, 19 have lower open defecation rates than India. 

Some have argued that access matters; as the poor often don’t have access to latrines, they are left with no option but to relieve themselves in the open. Taken to its logical conclusion, this line of thinking implies that simply building toilets would end the problem of open defecation in India.

But this explanation falls apart when you learn that over 40 per cent of the households the authors surveyed had a working latrine and yet had at least one family member who defecated in the open.

Access to water is believed to be another hindrance. But the authors point out that while rural India has far greater access to water than sub-Saharan Africa, the latter has lower open defecation rates than India. 

To buttress their arguments, they also point out that the 2011 census finds that almost half of rural households who have water on their premises do not own a latrine. 

Another widely held explanation is the lack of education. But 82 per cent of the countries with lower literacy rates than India have lower open defecation rates. 

And while some argue that India’s poor governance record also plays a role, the authors argue that states that are perceived to be better governed have only slightly better open defecation rates than those considered to be poorly governed. 

The authors thus conclude that India’s high rates of open defecation cannot be explained by the usual suspects, as other countries have managed to achieve better sanitation with far fewer inputs. 

It’s a matter of choice. 

“Far too many free latrines are never wanted or never used. Even when they receive a latrine, people in rural India defecate in the open,” they say. The latrines often end up being used for storage, washing clothes etc they say. 

Their explanation for this unusual behaviour rests on notions of untouchability and ritual purity that they prophesise play an integral role in explaining this. “Village concepts of purity and pollution play an important role in explaining why some reject the kinds of inexpensive latrines that are used in other developing countries,” they say. 

“In villages, open defecation is a far superior choice to storing faeces in a government provided latrine pit that would need to be emptied by hand, an activity which invoke(s) a generations old struggle between people who are still too often thought of as untouchables,” they say, elaborating on their hypothesis. 

Drawing on various anthropological and sociological studies, they argue that rules about purity and pollution are often used to reinforce caste hierarchies. The purity of the home is seen by many as a reflection of one’s character. And so in society where “social mobility depends on adopting the value system of the caste elite why would lower caste people set themselves apart as different and worse by installing a latrine when the only benefit they see is perhaps convenience?”

If this is true, then how can India end the practice of open defecation? And can the ambitious Swachh Bharat Mission hasten its decline? 

On the latter, the authors are rather pessimistic. Noting that the programme is simply a replica of the previous government’s Nirmal Bharat Abhiyan, only more ambitious in scale, they contend that it is unlikely to end open defecation by 2019. 

On the critical issue of how India can end the practice of open defecation, the authors propose shifting the discourse to conversations on culture, choices, and caste to confront the tricky issues of untouchability, purity, and pollution. Further, spreading awareness that latrine pits don’t fill too quickly and can be emptied by hand might go a long way in helping the cause of toilet usage. 

This is where the book is at its weakest.

There isn’t a 10-point action plan that bureaucrats and politicians would prefer. And given the Indian state’s disdain for experimentation it’s hard to see them gung-ho about a trial-and-error strategy. 

This weakness reflects partly the lack of research on what exactly would incentivise households to change.

Perhaps a more credible alternative, one more convincing, would be to carry out a series of randomised control trials on various strategies to change habits and publish those results on what works and what doesn’t.