The World Needs An Urgent Fix For Toxic Public Restrooms

(MENAFN- Khaleej Times) Civilisation begins with clean public toilets so both governments and public are equal partners in hygiene responsibility

By: Suresh Pattali

“What are living organisms?” was once a chapter in a primary science textbook in India - perhaps everywhere in the world. Closely following it was another chapter: “What do living things need to survive?”

I vividly remember memorising the five essentials, reciting them almost like a mantra: sunlight, water, air, shelter, and food - though not always in that order.

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Yet, there was something curiously absent from that tidy list of life’s necessities. The textbooks spoke of what living beings must take in, but said nothing of what they must inevitably let out. Missing from the catalogue of essentials was perhaps the most universal of biological realities - elimination, or, in more ordinary language, pooping.

“Isn’t it obvious?” could well have been the pedagogic explanation for that curious omission. But for the mostly uneducated politicians who presume to decide what Indians should eat, wear, and learn, the mistake proved convenient. It allowed them to ignore, for more than eighty years, a basic human necessity - quietly eliminating it from national and state priorities, and, consequently, from public budgets.

Hence, even in an age when engineers design specialised vacuum-assisted toilets for astronauts - devices that overcome zero gravity by pulling waste away from the body through controlled airflow - countries like India still find themselves on a far less flattering list. Alongside several sub-Saharan nations such as Nigeria, Ethiopia, Niger, and Madagascar, and even some Asian neighbours including Bangladesh and China, India continues to be counted among places where open defecation has long been practised.

Two things my son mentioned after returning from a study tour to China remain etched in my mind. One was rather amusing. In a shopping mall, several Phoenix-eyed girls stopped him to remark how beautiful his wide eyes were. The other was less amusing - and rather sobering. During his brief stay at the Kunming Medical College, he had witnessed, and occasionally experienced, the persistence of open defecation practices.

“Dad,” he said,“China is not just about the swanky skylines of Beijing, Shanghai, and Shenzhen.”

Back in India, our own predicament was perhaps best captured by a colleague at Singapore’s Straits Times after his return from India. It had been the Singaporean Indian’s first visit to the subcontinent.

“So, how was the trip? You had been so excited,” I asked.

“I saw a dozen bare bottoms in the bushes when the plane landed - and another dozen when it took off,” he replied.

He said no more. And quickly moved on to another topic. I felt like an ice cube left out in the open, quietly melting into nothing.

I could not help writing this because my most recent visit to some of India’s world-famous hill stations turned out to be deeply nightmarish. With so much being said about my country’s rapid socio-economic progress, it was only natural to expect that basic amenities - such as clean and accessible public restrooms - would be available across the nation, serving both domestic and foreign tourists alike. What we encountered instead was, quite simply, despicable.

It was our first trip to Munnar, often described as the Switzerland of South India. It was Christmas night, and the temperature had dipped close to 5°C - rare for that part of the world. Traffic had come to a complete halt soon after sunset as the rolling hills, carpeted with vast tea plantations, slowly sank into a sea of white mist. Long serpentine queues of vehicles stretched for several kilometres, all trying to return to hotels scattered far from the town centre.

Inside those stationary cars were thousands of travellers - women, young and old - desperately needing restrooms. Some walked kilometres ahead to restaurants and hotels, hoping to find a toilet and then catch up with their families once the vehicles began moving again. My sisters, both in their late sixties and seventies, nearly collapsed after pushing their endurance to the limit.

“Oh, it isn’t uncommon during the peak season,” some locals remarked.

Perhaps. But the responsibility of preparing such a sought-after destination to receive such massive crowds surely rests with the government and the authorities.

Instead, the responsibility of providing restroom facilities is conveniently pushed onto roadside restaurants. The result is a distressing sight: crowds of travellers waiting impatiently outside tiny restrooms, while diners inside savour their meals. It is an undignified spectacle - and one that a country aspiring to global standards should no longer tolerate.

During my Bombay days in the 1980s, one of the biggest daily ordeals after a long train journey was using the public toilet inside the erstwhile Victoria Terminus. Studies suggesting that germs could travel upstream when contaminated toilets were used always troubled me. The experience was depressing, to say the least, and it was one of the reasons that eventually made the idea of seeking a job abroad rather appealing.

Independent India is now approaching its first century. In the early decades, the Nehruvian push to modernise the country largely overlooked Gandhi’s emphasis on rural empowerment - his call for promoting local production, sanitation, and education as the foundations of a self-reliant society. The development of villages and the empowerment of women often took a back seat during decades of policy priorities.

More recently, Narendra Modi attempted to address one part of this gap through a campaign to build nearly 100 million toilets under the Swachh Bharat initiative. In terms of reducing open defecation, the programme is widely considered a significant achievement. Yet the condition of public toilets across the country remains, in many places, deeply unsatisfactory.

The rapid growth of domestic tourism is bringing hundreds of thousands of travellers - including elderly women who simply cannot wait indefinitely - to India’s popular destinations. During a recent drive around the busy Kodaikanal Lake, I searched desperately for a usable public toilet for my eldest sister. Every facility we came across was either highly unsanitary, poorly maintained, or completely non-functional.

Some Indian cities once introduced sleek, automated, self-cleaning restroom kiosks, even offering sanitary napkins for a small fee. Today, many of them stand abandoned - functioning less as public amenities and more as shelters for stray dogs and drug peddlers.

Politicians and the public alike share responsibility for India’s hygiene crisis. While governments have often failed to provide and maintain basic civic infrastructure, the common citizen has been equally complicit. House-proud Indians are notorious for keeping their own homes spotless yet showing little regard for the condition of public spaces. Streets, parks and public facilities are too often treated as someone else’s responsibility.

Bathing twice a day under the comfort of one’s own golden shower cannot wash away this collective civic failure. Until both the state and society recognise their shared duty to respect and maintain public hygiene, the problem will even chase us to the Mars, moon and beyond.

Public toilets, it must be said, are not exclusively an Indian problem. Even some wealthy nations fail to provide adequate facilities in proportion to the number of tourists they welcome. In parts of Europe, public toilets exist, but cleanliness is often treated with surprising indifference.

When I first arrived in Dubai, the issue of public toilets caught my immediate attention. Tourists wandering through the winding alleys of the old souks in Bur Dubai and Deira - especially in the oppressive summer heat - would often stop to ask where they could find a public restroom. After months of exploring the area myself, I realised that there were only one or two such facilities, discreetly tucked away in obscure backstreets.

Having lived in the heart of Karama for nearly two decades, I frequently encountered tourists asking the same question. Hundreds of visitors flocked to the once-popular shopping district and wandered its streets late into the night, yet I often had no satisfactory answer to offer. Most of them eventually depended on the goodwill of a handful of restaurants in the area.

Remarkably, that situation seemed to change little even as Dubai’s tourism numbers surged - from about three million visitors in 2000 to nearly 19 million within a few years - and the city transformed from a modest port into a bustling global metropolis. In many cities, including Dubai, this essential but often overlooked service continues to be provided largely by shopping malls rather than by dedicated public facilities.

Singapore, by contrast, stands tall in the world when it comes to public hygiene and restroom standards. After separating from Malaysia in 1965, the city-state invested heavily not only in infrastructure but also in reshaping public attitudes towards cleanliness, gradually transforming itself into one of the cleanest cities on earth.

As the Singapore Restroom Association famously puts it: “In total, we spend almost three years of our lives in the toilet. It is natural and normal - so let us learn to say, ‘Wow! That’s a great toilet!’ and tell our friends about it.”

The association even runs a programme that grades public toilets on a scale ranging from one star to a coveted six-star rating.

Having called Singapore home for a decade as permanent residents - and having lived in nearly 40 homes over the course of our lives - the Pattalys developed one simple rule during house hunts: If you like the washroom, take the house.

After all, it matters to be washroom-proud.

The writer is executive editor of Khaleej Times

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