Why we should talk shit. A lot more.

While recalling a part my my life in the old country, I wrote in an email to Ramesh:

[As] kids we used to go to grandmas' villages every summer.  in my really early years, it always freaked me out to sit on a ledge and crap, and the shit would collect down in a hole. Every couple of mornings a scavenger would collect the shit.  My brother and I would typically develop constipation because we would refuse to go there and our systems would get messed up ... This was the case when we were kids.  I can't imagine the daily life eighty years ago when my father was a kid ...

Perhaps I am in the minority to constantly marvel how far I have come, and how far we humans have come when we take a historical perspective ..

Those were some bad old days, especially for the ones condemned to manual scavenging.  Thankfully, that practice has been largely eliminated.

Perhaps such early childhood experiences were subconscious triggers for why I never felt attracted to money-making careers as much as I have been drawn to simply understanding and making sense of the craziness on this planet.

A few years ago, when my father was recalling experiences from his early years as a civil engineer, he ended up lecturing me about the the complications of sewer systems, and how and why he designed a certain kind of a septic tank system at grandma's home.   He seemed particularly excited with the physics and engineering of the percolation!

Even now, I often use the conditions of bathrooms as a quick proxy measure of everything else in a society. Public restrooms as art was quite a fascinating experience for me when I was in New Zealand.

Every visit to India provides me more evidence than before that conditions are changing for the better, and are changing quite rapidly.  

But, the larger issue of how to dispose off the shit is a tough one for India; as I noted in one of my earliest posts when I restarted this blog in 2008:

One out of every two persons in the world compelled to defecate in the open is an Indian.

Sewer infrastructure is expensive.  The return on the investment on sewers is not immediate as might be the case when comparable amounts are invested in factories, for instance.  The benefits of sewer systems accrue over time from better health conditions, and the time-horizon is beyond the typical shorter-time horizons that the market prefers. Hence, whether it was the UK or the US, or even in the case of India, sewer infrastructure is considered as a public good and is undertaken by governments.

If only we can develop less expensive ways of processing shit.  That is one of the projects that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation is keen on:

If only India will make this a priority.  Of course, Bollywood or the IT industry might be a lot more "sexy" topic to talk about.  But, in terms of urgency, I cannot imagine very many--definitely not Bollywood or cricket--to be more urgent than toilet and shit. 

In a related conversation in Facebook, another school-mate, Krishna, writes:

Jairam Ramesh, tried to put toilets on the national agenda - but has now been shunted out to some other ministry

It is unfortunate that the minister, Ramesh, about whom I have appreciatively blogged more than once, couldn't make that happen.