Sanitation crisis in India

I hope you don't mind that I changed the title.  I thought that "Hygiene in India" didn't make it clear that this was about sewer and plumbing systems there.

 Ken I don' think anyone is and I didn't get that feeling from the article at all.  For an article like this I actually found it pretty decent in that it delved into some of the complexities of the situation, the enormity of dealing with it as well as the consequences at the individual and societal level.   It was more then just a oh look bad people type of trope that articles like this can be. 

 Thanks for posting it Jackie and I agree it is a horrible situation. While reading served as a reminder of  how the basic nesscessties like access to toilets and basic santitation is imperative and has to be addressed.  I think it's something that gets taken for granted or not even talked about much.   I also appreciated the willingness to talk about the 'icky' especially regarding the particular needs of women and menstruation as well as the framing that the situation isn't just about the  economics and health  but basic dignity and the ability to just function at a most basic level.  

 I'll admit that I was pretty depressed by it all in that kind of horrified way until I reach the end and the part which talked about  Santha Sheela Nair and her work and viewpoint of challenging the accepted wisdom that sanitation and toilets = water and sewers that take it away in and out of sight out or mind sort of way, especially considering the lack of water as a resource and the enormous costs involved in building those sort of systems.   There are other ways and potential ways in dealing and looking at human poo and whatnot in a sanitary manner which she talks about.   It made me think about the sort of reactions here with things like composting toilets.  The biggest and most basic one being simply "ewww gross that's disgusting no way am I doing or using  that" as well as the problems people have with planning codes in some areas where they want to put them in and actually used their excrement as a resource on site rather then just something you have to make disappear only to get dumped somewhere else and not think about. 

I didn't think the article itself was necessarily biased in the way my other post spoke of, but this is the sort of thing that we always need to be vigilant about, at least in making sure we know what the motivations and intentions of the posters are.

_________________________________________________________________________________________________ Our Demands Most Moderate are/ We Only Want The World! -James Connolly

This article is about poverty in general in India, but the interesting part is that it describes many of the cultural factors involved as well as the more purely economic ones we'd normally think of.

The family has some of the basic problems that plague people around the world, having no land, no assets, no cash to buy food nor any real way to change their situation. As elsewhere, efforts to help the very poor here have been marred by corruption and mismanagement. But these ills are exacerbated by a collection of factors peculiar to India, from a squabble over the philosophical legacy of Mahatma Gandhi to intractable battles over caste hierarchy to the uncommonly stark powerlessness of Indian women.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20090321.wstarve21/BNStory/International/home