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Worth sh!t

By: Santosh :+: Under: Business, It Happens Only in India
On: ⋅ July 10, 2008 ⋅  Email this post ⋅  Print this post ⋅ Post a comment
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“This is worth sh!t” or conversely “not worth a sh!t” takes on a whole new meaning in the Indian village of Musiri in Tamil Nadu. [CNN]

You can now buy a deluxe lota with your sh!t
img: via Wiki

Anyone who lives in India or has visited knows that often, hygiene is not among the top priorities particularly in the rural areas and slums. When traveling by rail or bus, particularly in the mornings, you can often see a host of people, mostly males, relieving themselves along the side of the tracks or roads with the dutiful “lota” serving as sidekick to this sordid daily ritual. The dawn of the pay-an-use toilets of the Sulabh era, has somewhat alleviated this problems particularly in urban areas but a lot of rural areas are still beyond the reach of Sulabh and/or too poor to afford even that.

In true desi ishtyle, a non-profit organization Society for Community Organisation and People’s Education (SCOPE) has come up with an unique scheme to stop people from going in public.

The remote town of Musiri in the Tamil Nadu state has hit upon a unique idea to teach its residents proper hygiene: Pay them money each time they use the toilet.

Users can make up to $0.14 a month to relieve themselves in a specially constructed toilet. Not a princely sum, but it’s extra cash flow that low-income residents can make just for answering nature’s call.

When I heard this news, my initial reaction was something along the lines of “you must be sh!tting me!. Paying people to sh!t?? That’s a load of cr@p!! What’s to prevent people and the babus from misusing this scheme?? Besides why must people be paid to do something they would do anyway??”.

Another line of thought was: “I missed the boat!! All my life I’ve literally been flushing away thousands of rupees down the drain.”

But on reading the proposed economics and methodology of this scheme, it started to make more sense. If this scheme succeeds it may be because of the simplicity more than anything else. People in the rural areas and shanties in urban areas, are used to relieving themselves in public. It’s more second nature. If anything the money provides them with an incentive to use the toilets. This in itself, is probably more effective than any cheesy slogans or campaigns the government can come up with. The plan is simple - pay people to use the public toilets, keep it to small amounts and put some guidelines in place to prevent some common forms of misuse.

Also the amount of money involved seems to be thought through.

Subburaman arrived at the amount by calculating that an average person will need to relieve himself two times for each of the 30 days and make 10 paisas per visit.

At Rs. 6 (10 paisa * 2 * 30) a month per person, the amount is too small for greedy government babus to worry about but for a family of 4 or 5 in the rural areas could quickly add up to a small handy amount for the month.

What about sh!tting by proxy …..

For now, residents queue up twice a day. They are given cards on which each trip is marked off.

…. or over sh!tting?

“If they ask to go three, four times a day, then something’s wrong,” he said. “We ask them to go to a doctor.”

Another brilliant facet to this plan is the use of, pardon the pun, the by-products.

… the waste products go into research to test their effectiveness as fertilizers.

“The urine that is collected goes into fields for paddy crops, and of course the feces becomes good compost in a matter of months.”

Initial efforts show encouraging results.

The Musiri plan seems to be working, Subburaman said. About 150 residents use the eco-sanitation toilet daily. It has special chambers that collect the fecal matter that researchers then use as fertilizer.

Economics, eco-friendliness, sanitation and hygiene all-in-one, truly desi ishtyle. We’ve been unable to confirm rumors that these toilets will have piped music playing Gwen Stefani:
“Let me hear you say this sh!t is bananas
B-A-N-A-N-A-S”

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