by Rose George
Hiding in his privy The king had apparently blocked up his only chance of escape—the hole through which the privy contents were supposed to fall to the ground below—after he had been playing a ball game and lost too many balls down the hole. He was finally stabbed sixteen times after “that odious and false traitour, sir Robert Grame [descended] down also into the privy to the king, with an horribill and mortall weapon in his hand.” John Shirley, Life and Death of King James I of Scotland, ed. Joseph Stevenson (Edinburgh: Maitland Club, 1837); accessed from the National Libraries of Scotland, http://www.nls.uk/scotlandspages/timeline/1437.html.
Celebrities who do charity work for water “Water Wins the Celebrity Oscar—Sanitation Stuck on the B-List,” International Water and Sanitation Council/IRC news release, March 23, 2007.
A smile on my face Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council (WSSCC), Listening (Geneva: WSSCC, 2004), p. 23.
An average $7 return Guy Hutton, Laurence Haller, and Jamie Bartram, “Global Cost-Benefit Analysis of Water Supply and Sanitation Interventions,” Journal of Water and Health (May 2007): 481–502.
£54,000 a year David Redhouse, Paul Roberts, and Rehema Tukai, “Everyone’s a Winner? Economic Valuation of Water Projects,” Water Aid Discussion Paper, 2004, p. 3, quoting Tristram Hunt, Building Jerusalem: The Rise and Fall of the Victorian City (London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 2004), p. 259.
It would save $660 billion Hutton, Haller, and Bartram, “Global Cost-Benefit Analysis”; and personal communication with Guy Hutton, March 2008.
Losses from agricultural revenue John Oldfield, “Community-Based Approaches to Water and Sanitation: A Survey of Best, Worst and Emerging Practices,” draft paper for the Navigating Peace Initiative of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars’ Environmental Change and Security Program, p. 13.
Averting a child’s death Sandy Cairncross and Vivian Valdmanis, “Water Supply and Sanitation,” in Disease Control Priorities in Developing Countries, 2nd ed., ed. D. T. Jamison, G. Alleyne, J. G. Breman, M. Claeson, D. B. Evans, Prabhat Jha, et al. (Washington, D.C.: World Bank, 2006), p. 776.
47 times more on its military budget United Nations Development Programme, Human Development Report 2006, p. 62.
Blowing up some electricity pylons Electricity pylons from Kasrils’s application for amnesty from South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, available at http://www.doj.gov.za/trc/decisions/2001/ac21168.htm. Other biographical information from the African National Congress website at http:www.//anc.org.za/people/kasrils.html; and from personal communication with Lorna Michaels at South Africa’s Ministry of Intelligence. For more on Kasrils, including his career as the poet ANC Khumalo, see his Armed and Dangerous: My Undercover Struggle under Apartheid (Johannesburg: Jonathan Ball Publishers, 1993). Kasrils’s senior sanitation adviser during his time as Minister for Toilets was Denis Goldberg, who was convicted along with Nelson Mandela at the Rivonia Trial in 1964, and spent twenty-two years in prison. He’s now particularly interested in latrine emptying by enzymes.
Victory with its pants down “The great anatomist Sidrac,” in conversation with doctors Goudman and Grou, as told by Voltaire, believed strongly in the power of constipation, telling his listeners that Oliver Cromwell had not visited the necessary house for eight days before he cut off King Charles’s head. Equally, Sidrac stated, the Duke of Guise le Balafré was often advised to avoid King Henri III on a winter’s day when the northeast wind was blowing, because the king would be attempting to alleviate his constipation on his close-stool. François Voltaire, Candide, Zadig and Selected Stories, trans. Donald Murdoch Frame (New York: Signet Classic, 2001), p. 344.
The color that flies liked least Monestier, Histoire at Bizarreries, p. 179.
The excreta is deadly According to Charles Heyman of Jane’s Defence Weekly, pungis are still used to guard opium poppy fields in Southeast Asia. In Colombia, meanwhile, the revolutionary group ELN has used bombs containing clay mixed with human feces, to increase the risk of infecting wounds. Personal communication with Charles Heyman; Mariano C. Bartolome and Maria Jose Espona, “Chemical and Biological Terrorism in Latin America: The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia,” ASA [Applied Science and Analysis] Newsletter 5/1998 (2003). Also E. Lesho, D. Dorsey, and D. Bunner, “Feces, Dead Horses, and Fleas—Evolution of the Hostile Use of Biological Agents,” Western Journal of Medicine 168 (1998): 512.
“Wow. Bang” Personal communication with Stephen Turner, WaterAid, March 2007.
HIV, safe water, malaria, or nutrition Arno Rosemarin, EcoSanRes Program—Phase Two 2006–2010 (Eschborn: DWA, Hennef and GTZ, 2006), p. 9.
Ninety-two have never counted them “The Eight Commandments,” The Economist, July 5, 2007.
Jack and Jill WSSCC has recently updated its campaign. New images include a blindfolded man standing in front of a firing squad wall, but his executioners are holding glasses of water, not guns. The slogan reads “Dirty Water Kills.” Another shows sperm-shaped water droplets under the slogan “In some countries women risk rape by collecting water.” All campaign images are available from http://www.wsscc.org.
The Blair latrine Peter Morgan, “Ecological Sanitation in Africa: A Compendium of Experiences,” http://www.ecosanres.org/PM_Report.htm.
179 flies a day Andy Robinson, “VIP Latrines in Zimbabwe: From Local Innovation to Global Solution” (Nairobi, Kenya: Water and Sanitation Program—Africa Region, 2002), p. 2.
School enrollment increased UNICEF, “Children and Water, Sanitation and Hygiene: The Evidence,” Human Development Report Office Occasional Paper No. 50 (New York: UNDP, 2006), p. 3.
4. GOING TO THE SULABH
Longest surviving social hierarchy Smita Narula, Broken People: Caste Violence against India’s “Untouchables” (New York: Human Rights Watch, 1999), p. 24.
India’s British rulers The British created official posts of manual scavengers, and used scavengers to clean army cantonments and municipalities. Dry toilets abounded in all British-run environments. Gita Ramaswamy writes, “This is not to say the British invented caste or manual scavengers; rather they intervened specifically to institutionalize it.” Gita Ramaswamy, India Stinking: Manual Scavengers in Andhra Pradesh and Their Work (Pondicherry: Navayana, 2005), p. 6.
Between 400,000 and 1.2 million manual scavengers Ramaswamy quotes figures from the Ministry for Social Justice and Empowerment, which calculated in 2002–2003 that there were 676,000 manual scavengers in India. In his foreword to India Stinking, Safai Karmachari Andolan leader Bezwada Wilson puts the total at 1.3 million. Ibid., pp. vi, ix.
10 million dry latrines WSSCC, Listening (Geneva: WSSCC, 2004), p. 36.
Manual scavenging illegal Narula,Broken People, p. 149.
The Constitution of India Ibid., p. 149. Article 17 reads in full: “‘Untouchability’ is abolished and its practice in any form is forbidden. The enforcement of any disability arising out of ‘Untouchability’ shall be an offense punishable in accordance with law.” Constitution of India, 1949, available from the Government of India’s Ministry for Law and Justice at http://lawmin.nic.in/coi.htm.
Three men died of asphyxiation 22,237 Dalits die doing sanitation work every year. S. Anand, “Life Inside a Black Hole,” Tehelka, December 8, 2007.
Loses arm as a result Stephanie Barbour, Tiasha Palikovic, Jeena Shah, and Smita Narula, “Caste Discrimination against Dalits or So-called Untouchables in India, Submission to the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination” (New York: Center for Human Rights and Global Justice, New York University/Human Rights Watch, 2007), p. 40.
Three Dalit women were raped National Campaign on Dalit Human Rights, “Alternate Report to the Joint 15th to 19th Periodic Report to the State Party (Republic of India) to the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination” (New Delhi: National Campaign on Dalit Human Rights, 2006), p. 2.
Sit apart from other children Ibid., p. 10.
Spade, Black, Dung, Horse Ramaswamy, I
ndia Stinking, p. 17.
Fifteen duties for slaves Ibid., p. 5.
Baiting of cesspit emptiers The French royal ordinance of 1350 authorized laborers from all trades and guilds to become cesspit emptiers if they chose, and stipulated that “whosoever insults them or does them violence will be fined.” Monestier, Histoires et Bizarreries Sociales des Excréments, p. 100.
In a northwesterly direction The Essenes, widely believed to have written the Dead Sea Scrolls, suffered for their good hygiene, according to recent research in the Scroll site of Qumran in the West Bank. Because Qumran’s inhabitants designated a specified place as a latrine and buried their waste rather than following the Bedouin custom of open defecation (which meant feces dried out in the sun), they tramped fecal pathogens back into their camp. This could explain why only 6 percent of male corpses found in Qumran had survived beyond the age of forty, whereas in first-century Jericho, nine miles away, the rate was 49 percent. Alan Boyle, MSNBC, “Toilet Tied to Tale of Dead Sea Scrolls,” November 15, 2006.
Smell like thine own dung J. G. Bourke, Scatologic Rites of All Nations: A Dissertation upon the Employment of Excrementitious Remedial Agents in Religion, Therapeutics, Divination, Witchcraft, Love-Philters, etc., in all Parts of the Globe (Washington, D.C.: W. H. Lowdermilk & Co., 1891), p. 143.
Fire an arrow John Stackhouse, “Clean Revolution Begins with Out-house,” Toronto Globe & Mail, December 19, 1994.
15 feet away from habitation Sulabh International, Sulabh International Museum of Toilets, n.d., p. 13.
A rough stick Vitta Khandaka, Collection of Duties, trans. Thanissaro Bhikkhu, http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/vin/cv/cv.08x.than.html.
The current chief justice Chief Justice K. G. Balakrishnan, known to his friends as Bala, is the first Dalit to hold the post. Narenda Jadhav, chief economist of India’s central bank, is another Dalit success story. They are the exceptions. Amelia Gentleman, “India’s Untouchable Millionaire,” Observer, May 6, 2007; “Balakrishnan Takes Over as New CJI,” The Hindu, January 15, 2007.
Won’t marry outside their own caste Sagarika Ghose, “The Cult of the Sex Goddess,” Guardian, August 14, 2007.
When I first wrote about manual scavengers Rose George, “These Indian Women Are Forced to Get Way Too Intimate with Their Bosses. And Not in a Good Way,” Jane, August 2003.
The cheapest cleaning option In the latest railway budget, Indian Railways did however allocate $1 billion to install three types of toilet—controlled discharge (to be released only when the train is going more than 18 miles an hour), biodegradable, and vacuum-retention—in 36,000 railway coaches. The reason for this largesse was that the 300,000 liters of human excreta gushing from India’s trains are rapidly corroding the rails. No mention was made of scavengers. Rahul Bedi, “India to Invest Millions in ‘Green’ Train Toilets,” Daily Telegraph, March 4, 2008.
A high court in Nizamabad Bezwada Wilson, “He Cleaned Up the System,” Tehelka, October 7, 2006.
The total eradication of manual scavenging “India Plans New System to Rehabilitate Scavengers,” Deutsche Presse-Agentur, January 30, 2007.
Their substance was subject enough Adrian Searle, “Absolute Excrement,” Guardian, December 4, 2007.
He publicly cleaned his own “There was no limit to insanitation. . . . There were only a few latrines, and the recollection of their stink still oppresses me. I pointed it out to the volunteers. They said point blank, ‘That is not our work, it is the scavenger’s work.’ I asked for a broom. The man stared at me in wonder. I procured one and cleaned the latrine. But that was for myself. The rush was so great, and the latrines so few, that they needed frequent cleaning, but that was more than I could do. . . . And the others did not seem to mind the stench and the dirt.” M. K. Gandhi, An Autobiography or The Story of my Experiments with Truth (Ahmedabad: Navajivan Publishing House, 1927, repr. 2006), pp. 206–7.
Evacuation is as necessary as eating “Everyone must be his own scavenger. . . . I have felt for years that there must be something radically wrong, where scavenging has been made the concern of [a] separate class in society.” M. K. Gandhi, Harijan, vol. 18, October 30, 1954.
Inequality was the soul of Hinduism B. R. Ambedkar, Writings and Speeches (Bombay: Government of Maharashtra, 1987), vol. 3, p. 66.
Quite an achievement of the imagination Virginia Smith,Clean: A History of Personal Hygiene and Purity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), p. 29.
The utmost violation of human rights Bindeshwar Pathak, “Operation, Impact and Financing of Sulabh,” Occasional Paper for the Human Development Report 2006, p. 4.
232 of India’s 5,233 towns Ibid.
The kind you get from chronic diarrhea For more on Delhi’s sewage and the dying Yamuna, see Fecal Attraction: The Political Economy of Defecation, a film by Pradip Saha, Center for Science and the Environment, New Delhi, 2006, available from http://csestore.cse.org.in.
A pioneering composter Gandhi gets most of the credit, but India has a proud history of pioneering sanitation activists and composters, including Appa Saheb Patwardhan, whose name lives on in a foundation set up by another pioneering sanitation activist, Dr. S. V. Mapuskar, who has installed 75 human waste biogas digesters in his hometown of Dehu, near Pune, making it unique. S. P. Singh, Sulabh Sanitation Movement: Vision-2000 Plus (New Delhi: Sulabh International Social Service Organisation, 2005), p. 306.
Poor people in Uganda United Nations Development Programme, Human Development Report 2006, “Beyond Scarcity: Power, Poverty and the Global Water Crisis” (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), p. 51.
The eminence of Faraday S. P. Singh, Sulabh Sanitation Movement, p. iii.
Well-known businessmen readily agree Pathak, Operation, Impact and Financing, p. 11.
Half a million Indians WSSCC, Listening, p. 37.
A candle in the dark: Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, “Sanitation Is a Business” (Bern, Switzerland: Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation, 2004), p. 18.
5. CHINA’S BIOGAS BOOM
Their soils turned to dust David Montgomery, Dirt: The Erosion of Civilizations (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2007), p. 181. The agricultural scientist Franklin Hiram King, who spent nine months traveling through China and Japan in 1909, was as impressed by Asia’s sensible use of all waste as he was scornful of the West’s waste of it. He concluded that “the people of the United States and of Europe are pouring into the sea, lakes or rivers and into the underground waters from 5,794,300 to 12,000,000 pounds of nitrogen; 1,881,900 to 4,151,000 pounds of potassium; and 777,200 to 3,057,600 pounds of phosphorus per million of adult population annually, and this waste we esteem one of the great achievements of our civilization.” F. H. King, Farmers of Forty Centuries (1911; Whitefish, Mont.: Kessinger Publishing, repr. 2004), p. 63.
Threw her into the toilet to die Cesuo wenhua manlun (General essays on toilet culture), ed. Feng Shufei, Zhang Yiguo, and Zhang Dongsu (Shanghai: Tongji University Press, 2005), pp. 49–50.
Stinky Shit Egg Shanghai night soil-collector-turned-competitive-bicyclist Chen Qiaozhu told that passersby would see her and “pooh-pooh her, plug their noses, and spit,” to which Chen would fiercely reply, “Look! If we stopped doing this work for just three days, Shanghai would turn into Stinkytown!” Night-soil collector heroes were politically useful because “only in a truly liberated society could a collector and carrier of human waste be given the honor of making an address in the hallowed Great Hall of the People.” Andrew Morris, “‘Fight for Fertilizer!’ Excrement, Public Health and Mobilization in New China,” Journal of Unconventional History 6/3 (Spring 1995): 64.
Seas of Shit, Mountains of Fertilizer Ibid., pp. 61–62.
15.4 million rural households Personal communication with officials at the Institute of Biogas (BIOMA), Chengdu, China.
The excreta of genocidal murderers Biogas digesters are now installed in six Rwandan prisons. Using biogas instead of wood for energy has cut
wood use by 60 percent and saved £1 million in fuel costs. The odor-free compost that results from biogas has also done wonders for the prison gardens. BBC News, “Rwanda Award for ‘Sewage’ Cooking,” June 30, 2005.
A sizable international prize Ashden Awards for Sustainable Energy, “Ashden Awards Case Study, Shaanxi Mothers,” 2006, http://www.ashdenawards.org/winners/shaanxi.
Increased vegetable yields J. Paul Henderson, “Anaerobic Digestion in Rural China,” City Farmer, Canada’s Office of Urban Agriculture, available from http://www.cityfarmer.org/biogasPaul.html.
885 square feet of land Heinz-Peter Mang, presentation at the World Toilet Summit, Moscow, September 2006.
Six hours’ worth of a 60–100 watt bulb Practical Action, “Biogas and Liquid Biofuels Technical Brief,” p. 3, available at http://practicalaction.org/?id-biogas_expertise.
2.3 tons of wood Henderson, “Anaerobic Digestion.”
Count Alessandro Volta “The appearance of flickering lights emerging from below the surface of swamps was noted by Pliny and Van Helmont recorded the emanation of an inflammable gas from decaying organic matter in the 17th Century. Volta is generally recognized as putting methane digestion on a scientific footing.” Uri Marchaim, “Biogas Processes for Sustainable Development” (Rome, Italy: Food and Agriculture Organization, 1992), chap. 4.
A leper colony in Bombay Opinions differ as to whether the Ackworth Leper Colony in Matunga, Bombay, installed its pioneering biogas digester in 1859 or 1896. For 1859, see Paul Harris’s informative biogas pages at http://www.adelaide.edu.au/biogas. For 1896, see Marchaim, “Biogas Processes.”
66 pounds of feces daily Henderson, “Anaerobic Digestion.”
Strike for three days David G. Strand, “Feuds, Fights and Factions: Group Politics in 1920s Beijing,” Modern China 11/4 (October 1985): 425–27.
Sister Ah Gui, Shit Queen Hanchao Lu, Beyond the Neon Lights: Everyday Shanghai in the Early Twentieth Century (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), p. 194. For a fuller account of China’s fen business, see King, Farmers of Forty Centuries, p. 63.