Dinesh Kamath's Editorial (Urgent need of public toilets) that was published in Newsband

Urgent need of public toilets 

Public toilets are as critical as any large infrastructure project to make cities liveable. Indian cities are grossly underprovided in terms of public toilets. The existing ones are poorly maintained, badly located and hardly used. This persisting neglect has led to woeful sanitary conditions.

Providing toilets to the 15 million urban households that do not have them is a priority. Equally important is to provide toilets in public places. They are an integral part of the civic amenities and those who actively use the city need them. The government should build low-cost and easy to maintain toilets. It is not enough to address the problem of inadequate toilet numbers at the household level. What is needed is a scaled up and concerted effort to improve the status of public toilets. Designs have to radically change and turn this everyday public amenity to an object of civic pride. Anti-vandal fittings, enhanced safety measures and aesthetically pleasing colours combined with better location, good maintenance and recycling of resources would help meet this objective.

There should be sufficient numbers of toilets for women users — and special needs for the disabled must be accommodated. Local bodies should compel all road building and civic projects to allocate space for this purpose. The health of a city is inextricably linked to its toilets and it is imperative to provide them in sufficient numbers.

We cannot claim to become a 'Super Power' unless we provide basic needs for our citizens. It is the constitutional obligation for the government to provide toilets to the citizens as it is directly linked with health, education and complete well being of the citizens. The Government will have to take greater responsibility in developing basic infrastructure such as toilets and have to avoid dilly dallying tactics through hollow promises.

Of the 2.5 billion people in the world that defecate openly, some 665 million live in India. The indignity to a woman particularly increases manifold when the question of sanitation in open arises.

Everybody was critical of Minister Jairam when he had made a comment on Indian toilets and their scarcity. But he was right always; it’s just that people never took him seriously.