In slums of India, toilets lag cell plans: Columbus Dispatch November 1, 2010

In slums of India, toilets lag cell plans
Government doesn't deliver basic services

Monday, November 1, 2010 02:51 AM
BY RAVI NESSMAN

ASSOCIATED PRESS


RAFIQ MAQBOOL | ASSOCIATED PRE SS
A boy talks on a cell phone in a Mumbai slum. When President Obama visits India this week, he will find a country of startlingly uneven development and perplexing disparities.
MUMBAI, India - The Mumbai slum of Rafiq Nagar has no clean water for its shacks made of ripped tarp and bamboo. No garbage pickup along the rocky, pocked earth that serves as a road. No power except from cables strung illegally and haphazardly overhead.

And not a single toilet or latrine for its 10,000 people.

Yet nearly every destitute family in the slum has a cell phone. Some have three.

When President Barack Obama visits India on Saturday, he will find a country of startlingly uneven development and perplexing disparities, where more people have cell phones than access to a toilet, according to the United Nations.

It is a country buoyed by a vibrant business world of call centers and software developers, but hamstrung by a bloated, corrupt government that has failed to deliver the barest of services.

Its estimated growth rate of 8.5 percent a year is among the highest in the world, but its roads are crumbling.

It offers cheap, world-class medical care to Western tourists at private hospitals, yet it has some of the worst child mortality and maternal death rates outside sub-Saharan Africa.

And although tens of millions have benefited from India's rise, many more remain mired in some of the worst poverty in the world.

The cell-phone frenzy bridges all worlds. Cell phones are sold amid the Calvin Klein and Clinique stores under the soaring atriums of India's new malls, and in the crowded markets of its working-class neighborhoods. Bare shops in the slums sell pre-paid cards for as little as 20 cents next to packets of chewing tobacco, while street hawkers peddle car chargers at traffic lights.

The spartan Beecham's in New Delhi's Connaught Place, one of the country's seemingly ubiquitous mobile-phone dealers, is overrun with lunchtime customers of all classes looking for everything from a $790 Blackberry Torch to a basic, $26 Nokia.

Store manager Sanjeev Malhotra adds to a decades-old - and still unfulfilled - Hindi campaign slogan promising food, clothing an d shelter. " Roti, kapda, makaan" - and "mobile," he said, laughing. "Basic needs."

There were more than 670 million cell-phone connections in India by the end of August, a number that has been growing by close to 20 million a month, according to government figures.

Yet U.N. figures show that only 366 million Indians have access to a private toilet or latrine, leaving 665 million to defecate in the open.

"At least tap water and sewage disposal - how can we talk about any development without these two fundamental things? How can we talk about development without health and education?" said Anita Patil-Deshmukhl, executive director of PUKAR, an organization that conducts research and outreach in Mumbai.

The government is spending $350 million a year to build toilets in rural areas. Bindeshwar Pathak, the founder of the Sulabh Sanitation and Social Reform Movement, estimates the country needs about 120 million more latrines - likely the largest sanitation project in history.

"Those in power, only they can change the situation," said Pathak, who claims to have helped build a million low-cost latrines in India in the past 40 years. "India can achieve this - if it desires."

In the slums of Mumbai, home to more than half the city's population of 14 million, the yearning for toilets is so great that residents have built makeshift outhouses on their own.

Since there are no water pipes or wells in Rafiq Nagar, a crowded, 15-year-old slum on the lip of a 110-acre garbage dump, residents are fo rced to rely on the water mafia for water for cooking, washing clothes, bathing and drinking. The neighborhood is rife with skin infections, tuberculosis and other ailments.

"If the government would give us water, we would pay that money to the government," said Suresh Pache, 41, a motorized rickshaw driver.

In fact, the spread of cell phones might end up bringing toilets.

R. Gopalakrishnan, executive director of Tata Sons, one of India's most revered companies, says the rising aspirations of the poor, buttressed by their growing access to communication and information, will put tremendous pressure on the government.

People already are starting to challenge local officials who for generations answered to no one, he says.

Images of India-March, 2008: People

Images of India-March, 2008: Places

Images of India March, 2008: Welcome to Chennai

Chennai India March, 2008: Reflections on my First Visit

Craig's List: March 17, 2008

The following is a blog entry written on the M.V. Explorer after leaving the Port of Chennai, India in March, 2008. I served as a Dean on the spring, 2008 Semester at Sea voyage. India was one of the most meaningful ports of call on our voyage.
See www.semesteratsea.org if interested in this wonderful experience.

I share this blog entry of the past to begin framing my contextual perspective as I return to Chennai two and a half years later with Darrell Albon as we make our way to the first stop on our India OWU expedition.

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Since our last entry, we crossed the equator for our third (and last) time at 2150 hours on a beautiful evening. We greeted the "bump" with a toast on the faculty/staff lounge outside deck. As I write this entry, we are progressing toward Penang, Malaysia and will arrive there on Wednesday, March 19. But for now- a short report on India.....

Our early morning arrival in Chennai was uneventful, however, not without considerable preparation of our community for safety and security measures as India in general is considered a "moderate threat" according to our security consultants. Our berth was less than desirable from a passenger perspective. I am told that the Port of Chennai receives less than ten passenger ships annually so it is primarily an industrial port and is designed as such. The port is extremely dirty and not conducive to pedestrian movement. We were boarded by twenty customs and immigration officials who proceeded to examine the documentation required in order to clear the ship. In addition to the passport and visa, we needed an arrival card, a landing pass, a customs document, and a departure form as well as any receipts for purchases in the country. The procedures we were given to follow 24 hours in advance of our arrival changed considerably when we docked and were subsequently modified depending on which officials were working at the gangway-dockside and at the main gate to the port. Undeterred by the remnants of British bureaucracy, we persisted and were able to leave the ship by noon. After leaving the port, six of us left to go shopping and exploring. Instead of a cab, we chose the three-wheeled, three-seater motorized rickshaws. Small, light-weight, energy efficient, these vehicles provided us with an exceptionally exciting ride that we used several times throughout our stay in Chennai. For this first outing, Kelsey, Eric, and I went in one rickshaw; Stacey and two friends went in another. We expected to stay together but that didn't happen so we ended up going in two different directions to generally the same destination. In a city of 8 million or so people, that was an interesting opportunity! We did eventually find each other but it didn't really matter as we needed to do it all over again to get back to the ship. That evening, we enjoyed a welcome reception hosted by students and professors at a local engineering college that included music, food, dance, and conversation. The level of creativity in food preparation, dance, costuming, and henna design was wonderful. Overall, a great start to India.

We visited Kancheepuram (one of the seven most sacred Hindu pilgrimages) and Mamallapuram (an ancient port city of the Pallava Kings), two cities outside of Chennai, known for Hindu shrines and temples. Both of these cities were extraordinary and exposed us to temples over 12 centuries old-situated amidst stores, slums, and urban life, blessings by Hindu priests, cows and elephants roaming freely in the streets, extreme poverty, and sights and smells that cannot be described by words or photos. Among my favorites were Arjuna's Penance (the biggest bas-relief in the world) and Butterball- a huge boulder that defies understanding of how it ended up perched on a sloping granite hill. Most importantly, the people are simply wonderful- kind, welcoming, and full of smiles and stares. In stark contrast to these cities, we had a wonderful south Indian lunch in a resort constructed after the tsunami. It was a beautiful property on the beach within a good stone's throw of highly impoverished areas. For me, the experience in these cities was definitely an experience in contrasts- the old with the new, the rich with the poor, the pristine with the polluted.

In a light rain that soon turned into a downpour (on the edge of a tropical cyclone moving through), Kelsey, Eric, the executive dean, Kenn, and I ventured out to Kenn's favorite coffee shop right outside the port. Before leaving the port we stopped at Walnut Willies (a family-owned shop that had been around the port for 100 years) and then negotiated our way through flooded streets to get to the coffee shop where we enjoyed ten cups of wonderful south Indian coffee and buttered nan. This was followed by another rickshaw ride- with four of us (exceeding the three passenger limit) to some shopping areas. By the time we returned home late in the afternoon, we had just about dried out. We were told by our rickshaw driver that in India you can drive without lights, oil, and passengers but you cannot drive without using your horn. Riding in a rickshaw for several days was living proof that horn honking is a courtesy extended several times a minute by almost every driver on the street.

Eric remarked how crossing the street in India is like playing human frogger. Clearly we were the frogs trying to get across streets with few lights and many speeding bicycles, rickshaws, busses, cars, and motorcycles. We made it but not without a few scares. Interestingly by the end of our time in India, I was very impressed with Kelsey and Eric's confidence in moving through the streets in ways that would make us totally crazy in the states. Kelsey and Stacey received many stares, looks, and smiles as they negotiated the city. Eric was the recipient of multiple head pats, hand shakes, and cheek pinches- which he seemed to take in stride. With such company, I don't believe I was even on the screen!

Perhaps the most powerful experience for me was a field program entitled "socioeconomic problems in Chennai." We travelled a short distance from the port to a beachside slum which we toured on foot. The stench was at times overwhelming. Raw sewage moving to the ocean through open trenches forming makeshift streams of human waste and "gray water" from washing were networked throughout the slum. Huts that were used by fisherman who were able to afford flats further inland provided shelter at night for some people. Freshly caught fish, covered with flies next to napping goats adjacent to flat rocks upon which laundry was being done lined the pathway we followed along the beach. We learned about government plans to relocate these people to public housing further inland and then construct tourist-friendly properties on the beachfront. We also learned how this plan is meeting with resistance by those who access the ocean for fishing (and their livelihood) in this same area. We visited a couple of Hindu temples proximal to the slums and then ventured to a "colony"- government constructed housing for former slum residents interspersed among more middle class areas of the city. Here we met with representatives from an NGO that is primarily focused on empowering women to work in their own small businesses. This is accomplished by educating the women and creating collectives of about 15 women each to work collaboratively yet independently and financed by micro-loans that are managed by the women. According to the women in the program, this has been a wonderful success. They have developed skills, are generating an income, are developing financial autonomy, and have moved from the beach slum to a home with running water, a toilet, and electricity. Besides this, their children come together for school and child care! The NGO is continuing to broaden this model but it is slow-going and the challenge and scalability of this effort is very difficult. It didn't take long for the children to be attached to Kelsey and Eric. We lost Kelsey for a while as she ventured deeper in the colony getting offers to return and teach the children. Many are working hard to create a new India and there is much to do.

It seems to me that the extensive availability of inexpensive labor provides little incentive to purchase and use more modern methods to accomplish tasks. While that creates employment opportunities for folks, it may limit the speed at which change can occur. Although some pundits suggest that India has become ungovernable, I think that the combined efforts of NGOs such as the one we learned about can make a difference and perhaps transcend the shortcomings of government programs that are laced with bureaucracy and politics. I look forward to returning to India to further explore and enjoy the wonderful people who make this place quite special in many ways.

Stay tuned...

Craig