India, Bihar: rapes ’caused by lack of toilets’

Map showing frequency & severity of violence against
women in Bhalswa slum, Delhi. Shirley Lennon/SHARE.

The lack of safe toilets for women and girls is often linked to an increased risk of sexual harassment and rape. Earlier studies [1] from Kenya, Uganda and India, and now a recent BBC news item are some of the few sources to actually quantify this risk.

Senior police official Arvind Pandey from the Indian state of Bihar told the BBC that 400 women would have “escaped” rape in 2012 if they had toilets in their homes. The rapes take place when women go outside to defecate early in the morning and late evening. These “sanitation-related” rapes make up nearly half of the more than 870 cases of rape in Bihar in 2012.

The BBC news item lists three specific cases:

• On 5 May, an 11-year-old girl was raped in Mai village in Jehanabad district when she was going to the field at night
• On 28 April, a young girl was abducted and raped when she had gone out to defecate in an open field in Kalapur village in Naubatpur, 35km (21 miles) from the state capital, Patna
• On 24 April, another girl was raped in similar circumstances on a farm in Chaunniya village in Sheikhpura district. She told the police that two villagers had followed and raped her. One of them has been arrested

In Bihar , 75.8% of homes have no toilet facilities (Census 2011). Some 49% of the households without a toilet wanted one for “safety and security” for women and children, according to a study by Population Service International (PSI),   Monitor Deloitte and Water for People.

[1] Heise, L., 2013. Danger, disgust and indignity : women’s perception of sanitation in informal settlements. Powerpoint presented at “Making connections: Women, sanitation and health”, 29 April 2013, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM). Video version available at:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AS9ulpJqh7s

Related news:

• Request for Proposals: The effects of poor sanitation on women and girls in India, Sanitation Updates, 07 Mar 2013
• India, Delhi: how sexual violence against women is linked to water and sanitation, E-Source, 27 Mar 2012

Source: Amarnath Tewary, BBC, 09 May 2013

 

India, New Delhi: garbage trucks to be fitted with GPS and radio devices

Big brother will soon be watching over garbage truck drivers in East Delhi once the local municipal corporation installs an electronic tracking system. The East Delhi Municipal Corporation (EDMC) plans to install global positioning system (GPS) and radio frequency identification devices (RFID) in its garbage trucks.

This will enable the EDMC to track the garbage trucks movements and monitor their work performance.

The electronic devices are linked to an  ‘e-municipal solid waste disposal system’, which takes pictures of the vehicles at the garbage station and landfill site, when they pick up and dispose of the waste.

At the end of each day, the GPS will be used to submit a daily route mapping report on the areas cleaned.

East Delhi generates nearly 2,000 metric tonnes of garbage every day and has nearly 150 dump yards.

M/s AKS Software Ltd won the tender to install the electronic tracking system, which costs 19.2 million Rupees (US$ 353,000).

Related news: India, New Delhi: using Facebook and SMS to keep the city clean, Sanitation Updates, 15 Apr 2011

Source: Hindustan Times, 28 Mar 2013 ; PTI/Business Standard, 28 Mar 2013

 

BRAC WASH offers to help half a million Indian imams promote hygiene

On WaterCouch.tv, Rabbi Awraham Soetendorp shares a practical example of international water cooperation that emerged during the 2013 World Water Day celebrations in The Hague, The Netherlands. In one of the sessions, BRAC WASH programme director Dr Babar Kabir explained that his programme had trained 18,000 imams in Bangladesh to include hygiene messages in their Friday prayers (see Kabir, 2010).

Imam Umer Ahmed Ilyasi

Also present in The Hague was Iman Umer Ahmed Ilyasi, Chief Imam of the All India Organization of Imams of Mosques, “the largest and oldest imam organization of the world”.  Dr Kabir and the Chief Imam “agreed to cooperate on education for water and sanitation”. This cooperation has the potential to create “five hundred thousand new teachers” to spread hygiene messages all over India.

Kabir, B. et al., 2010. The role of imams and different institution[s] in hygiene promotion of BRAC WASH programme : paper presented at the South Asia Hygiene Practitioners Workshop, Dhaka, Bangladesh, 1 to 4 February 2010.  The Hague, The Netherlands: IRC International Water and Sanitation Centre. Available at: www.irc.nl/page/51613

WASH training for imams in Bangladesh. Photo: Masjid Council

SHARE – Request for proposals: The effects of poor sanitation on girls and women in India

Feb 21, 2013 – The SHARE Research Consortium is issuing a Request for Proposals (RFP) for research into the effects of poor sanitation on girls and women in India. Proposals must be led or co-led by an Indian research institution and must address at least one of the following questions:

• Psycho-social stress resulting from violence experienced by women in the course of using sanitation facilities or practicing open defecation.
• Operational research into menstrual hygiene management or determining the link between menstrual hygiene and infections.
• The practice of limiting, postponing or reducing food and liquid intake to control the urge to urinate or defecate: the prevalence of this behaviour and related health risks.

The deadline for submission of proposal is 17:00 GMT on 15 March 2013.

• For full details please refer to the RFP document

Email: aurelie.jeandron@lshtm.ac.uk

Plagiarism flushes sanitation paper

Just when another German minister is forced to resign after being accused of plagiarism, two less well-known sanitation scientists have been put to shame for the same offence.

Two scientists from India’s Center for Sustainable Technologies have had their journal article retracted after the publisher, Elsevier, discovered they had plagiarised a Swedish research paper.

Webinar: WASH in Schools, 13 December 2012

Webinar: WASH in Schools

National Policy Changed by WASH in Schools Research

Date: Thursday 13 December 2012

Time: 14:30 – 15:30 CET (Central European Time)
19:00 – 20:00 New Delhi
16:30 – 17:30 Nairobi
08:30 – 09:30 New York

Presenters:

Mamita Bora Thakkar, UNICEF India
Brooks Keene and Jason Oyugi, CARE

Whether you like it or not, governments have a role to play in effective implementation of WASH in Schools programmes. This webinar will explore how national policy is influenced by the work of UNICEF in India and SWASH+ in Kenya.

Combining experiences in Kenya and India, the webinar aims to do three things:

• examine how UNICEF India supports the Indian government in identifying and overcoming obstacles that prevent the achievement of sustainable WASH in Schools
• explore how the SWASH+ research helped change the national policy on school WASH in Kenya
  
• provide insights into how best to track progress and results.

Register here: https://www4.gotomeeting.com/register/428349031

After registering you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the Webinar.

Space is limited so please reserve your Webinar seat on time if you want to participate.

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Contact organisers

Ingeborg Krukkert, IRC International Water and Sanitation Centre
Krukkert@irc.nl

Malaika Cheney-Choker, CARE USA
mcheneycoker@care.org

India’s “sanitation crusader” Minister Jairam Ramesh stripped of post

Minister Jairam Ramesh and Bollywood actress and sanitation ambassador Vidya Balan at the launch of the Nirmal Bharat Yatra sanitation campaign. Photo: UNI

In a cabinet reshuffle Rural Development Minister Jairam Ramesh has been stripped of his additional post as Minister of State for Drinking Water and Sanitation [1]. His successor is Bharatsin Madhavsinh Solanki, a former railway minister and a Member of Parliament representing Gujarat’s Anand district.

News agency PTI reported that sources in Ramesh’s office were disappointed that their Minister was being replaced [2].

The Minister has been passionate about sanitation-related issues which he brought it in the limelight, they said, adding that Ramesh also managed to get additional funds to carry out the projects.

Worms Clean Toxic Metals from Indian Soil

Worms Clean Toxic Metals from Indian Soil | Source: Ben Barber, Huffington Post | Oct 8, 2012

Worms, those squishy animals sought after by fishermen for bait and early birds for nutrition, have not got a new occupation — treating thousands of tons of toxic sludge left in farms and fields by Indian factories as industrial growth skyrocketed in recent years.

They key to success has been that the worms burrow up to five feet deep into the contaminated soil, soak up heavy metals and other toxins, and then come to the surface without releasing the toxins.

The worms then are allowed to wander off into nearby land, dispersing and diluting the toxins so they no longer pose a threat to people or the environment. Otherwise, the worms may be transported to a secure, long term dump site or burned in an incinerator.

“We don’t talk about it at all !” The taboo of menstruation in rural Maharashtra

“We don’t talk about it at all !” The taboo of menstruation in rural Maharashtra, a major deterrent in achieving menstrual hygiene | Source:  Urmila Chanam, IndiaWaterPortal, Oct 2, 2012

Priyanka, 13 and a chirpy adolescent girl studying in a government school in a village called ‘Rohini Gaun’ 25 kms from Wardha in Maharashtra blushes and says, “We don’t talk about it at all!”. That is how deep seated the taboo around menstruation is in rural India and our society as a whole, where mothers do not discuss it with their daughters or even among themselves. It is something to be ‘hidden’ from each other and the men folk of the household as if it never happened!  Priyanka gushes and says, “I got my menses when I turned thirteen few months ago and till that very time, I had no information about what menstrual cycle is.” She says her mother told her nothing to prepare her for the change in her physiology and her life in general. “Menstruation onset turned my life upside down in more ways than one,” Priyanka says regretfully, as if she felt she had been better off before it began.

The Wash Yatra Team with the class on menstrual hygiene

In rural India as a whole, menstruation is a taboo writ with stigma not permitting discussion or even information seeking. Because of the shame and superstitions associated with this monthly biological occurrence, these women are impacted by poor menstrual hygiene. On an average a woman has 3000 days of menstruation in her lifetime, which begins from 8-16 years and ends in her late forties or early fifties, with very real and practical needs like material for absorption of menstrual blood, facilities for proper disposal of used materials with privacy and dignity.

The business of the honey-suckers in Bengaluru (India) – new IRC publication

A new IRC paper explores some contributions being made by honey-sucker tanker operators — that renders a small-scale sanitation service informally and within the private sector — on waste (faecal) extraction and, in some cases, reuse. Operating outside the legal framework of waste management, this paper provides preliminary insight into the limitations and potentials of the ‘honey-sucker business’ as a sanitation service model, based on selected experiences in Bengaluru (India).