Planning the (Un)Sanitary City: A Case of Delhi, India
Photo by Mahak Agrawal
Planning for Delhi’s sanitation networks is a complex matter. Its systems, development, operation and maintenance involve multiple agencies at all scales. The scope of sanitation has expanded, but emphasis remains on increasing treatment capacity and extending the modern sewerage network. But where do we plan for the sanitary conditions of informal settlements, not connected by this modern network?
“I have lost my girl to rascals, my boy’s hand to the railway, but this is the only option we have: do and die” (Image by Mahak Agrawal)
Sarla and Nivedita are neighbours living in a basti, which was given the tag of jhuggi jhopri (JJ) cluster[1] by the Government of National Capital Territory of Delhi[2] in 2014-15. This settlement of urban poor is inhabited by a tight-knit community of migrant workers who came from the south Indian city of Madras, now known as Chennai. On the eve of New Year 2019, I came across these two fine ladies coming to the basti with bottles hidden in their shawls, having crossed the Barapullah drain, in which flows human waste, rendering it a sewage canal; and the railway lines of Indian Railways, connecting Delhi to its neighbouring states of Haryana and Uttar Pradesh.
I ask Sarla where she has come from, to which Nivedita responds: “You are from the government, right? You should leave now. This is our community; we will do as we see fit”.
Having gone through similar episodes of initial hostility conducting research on informal settlements throughout the past four years in other parts of Delhi, I smiled back at Sarla and Nivedita and said, “No, Nivedita, I am not from the government. I am here as a human trying to take one of your biggest issues to those who would listen to me in the government. I can see you are coming from the tracks, and with that bottle hidden beneath your shawl, I am certain it was to address your nature’s call”.
Sarla and Nivedita respond with, “If you know it, why are you asking these silly questions?”.
Mahak: “I am asking you to tell your toilet story, Sarla and Nivedita. Will you?”
Sarla: “My madam tells me that with her tax my toilet is being constructed by the government, so I should stop giving her excuses of health issues and come to work every day. But, do you see one toilet in the entire basti?”
Nivedita: “Our local politician told us a community toilet has been constructed near the basti and we should use it, or else we can be put behind bars, or worse pay a fine as high as our two months income. They should live with us for an hour and see if they can walk 1 kilometre every time, they have to use the facility, that too a facility which is stinking and without water most of the time. How can we send our daughters and elders to these facilities which are surrounded by rascals who are waiting to harass any chance they get?”
Sarla: “I lost my girl to one of these rascals, my boy has lost one of his arms while crossing this railway line, but what other option do we have. We cannot do it in our homes, we do not have space in our basti to build a unit ourselves. The only option we have is to travel in pairs across the railway line and drain, find spaces away from public eye, and do our business. We do not like to live like this either, but do you see any other option?”
[1] Settlements of urban poor identified by the Delhi Urban Shelter Improvement Board (DUSIB), Government of National Capital Territory of Delhi (GNCTD) as “an encroachment on public or private lands. They are therefore seen as illegal” (DUSIB, 2014).
[2] Delhi is neither a city nor a state. It has a special status of being a union territory of India as well as the national capital. Delhi is officially known as National Capital Territory of Delhi, and its government is known as Government of National Capital Territory of Delhi (GNCTD). For the strategic status of Delhi, it’s functioning and jurisdiction lies with the Centre, GNCTD or city/state, as well as local governments.
This is ONE ‘toilet story’ from the capital of India, officially known as the National Capital Territory (NCT) of Delhi. There are thousands of other Sarlas and Niveditas waiting to live and relieve without a shred of fear. Is open defecation a way of living? No. Is it a last resort? Yes!
As an urbanist, it is overwhelming to talk about a matter as trivial as a toilet. It is like an urbanist working to provide and plan for clean water supply, and talk of a tap. As planners, when it comes to urban waste management, especially human waste, we focus on infrastructure, infrastructure and more infrastructure; be it sewerage networks, allocation of land for sewage treatment plants, or augmenting treatment capacity with rise of forthcoming population, their water demand and the waste thus generated. But, in this entire equation of land allocation and infrastructural augmentation, where do we plan for the sanitary state of a city’s population which is not connected by this modern network - and which often includes select urban villages and the urban poor?
“As planners, when it comes to urban waste management, especially human waste, we focus on infrastructure, infrastructure, and more infrastructure... But, in this entire equation of land allocation and infrastructural augmentation, where do we plan for the sanitary state of a city’s population which is not connected by this modern network – and which often includes select urban villages and the urban poor?”
Providing water is easy: provide a tubewell, or a standpost, or a few connections, and the community will be happy; but what about the human waste? This is where the trivial matter of the toilet comes into the picture of urban waste management.
On August 15, 2014, Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched a pan-India mission- Clean India Mission (famously known as Swachh Bharat Abhiyaan, in Hindi), envisaging an India free of open defecation by October 2, 2019; a date marking the 150th birthday of Mahatma Gandhi, who believed that ‘Cleanliness is next to Godliness’.
This launch was no less than a game changer in the sanitation history of India. First, sanitation became a national political priority overnight. Second, for the first time, urban India had a public policy for sanitation where sanitation was not a part of a larger scheme on water supply or housing or poverty reduction. Third, every citizen of India now had something to speak on matters of shit. The latter is particularly remarkable in Indian context for the country has a deep-rooted colonial and social cultural legacy of sanitation, especially urban sanitation, where social, physical segregation has a sanitary dimension. A section of society, is held ‘responsible’ for waste management. Speaking of anything to do with sanitation by a general citizen who is not ‘responsible’ for waste management is taboo.
With this Mission, every kid, man, and woman does not shy away from talking matters of shit in a general conversation about public health and cleanliness. Some of the biggest celebrities have been roped in by the Government of India as ambassadors of the Mission, where these ambassadors talk about sanitation matters over various media platforms.
The Mission document by the Modi Government details frameworks of assessment, provision, and monitoring. Funds have been transferred from the Centre to states and union territories of India to support states in implementing the Mission and realising the vision of an open-defecation-free India by 2019. Over 9 crore (~90 million) household and public toilets have been constructed in the past five years across India, with a few dozen in Delhi. However, the broader vision remains a dream.
“For 45 households we have 7 toilets in this mobile complex, zero is usable” (Image by Mahak Agrawal)
“Local bodies manage the sanitary state [...] by daily street sweeping, solid waste management, and constructing urinals in public spaces. These actions often ignore the needs of women in design, planning or management.”
Planning for Delhi’s sanitation networks is a complex matter. The urban sanitation systems for the NCT of Delhi, and its planning, development, operation and maintenance, involve multiple agencies at all scales of governance: Centre, state, city, district and local; for it is a union territory and the national capital. At the Centre, the Delhi Development Authority outlines the vision and provisions within the statutory plan documents, also known as a Master Plan. Since 1957, the Authority has formulated three Master Plans for Delhi: the Master Plan of Delhi, 1962- 1982, succeeded by the Plan for 1982-2001, which is superseded by the current Plan of 2001-21. With each plan the scope of sanitation has expanded but the emphasis remains on augmentation of treatment capacity through population-based wastewater calculations, land budgeting, and an extension of the modern sewerage network (DDA, 1982, 1990, 2007).
At city level, the urban sanitation systems’ administration is led by two agencies: the Delhi Jal Board (DJB), and the Delhi Urban Shelter Improvement Board (DUSIB). The former agency is the sole provider of water for the city and is also discharged with the responsibility of laying down a sewage network and augmenting its capacity periodically. However, it is not mandated to provide the human right to all living in the city. It thus conveniently limits its service delivery to planned developments or anyone who has a tenure, with minor interventions for unplanned developments of slums and unauthorized colonies where politics and economic forces come into play. For any planned area, all divisions of GNCTD will provide services, after due process of law and administration. But for unplanned, informal areas in the city, access is determined by local political leaders and their state of community works, few months prior to elections every five years. In the end, you have a few informal, unplanned areas where access is equivalent to those of planned areas, and several others where services are absent.
The Delhi Urban Shelter Improvement Board, however, focuses on the provision of community toilets in identified unplanned settlements within the city, identified as jhuggi jhompri (JJ) clusters.
At the local level, the city’s urban sanitation system is governed by five local bodies – the North, South and East Delhi Municipal Corporations, the New Delhi Municipal Council and Cantonment Board. Each of these local bodies manage the sanitary state within their jurisdiction areas by daily street sweeping, solid waste management, and constructing urinals in public spaces. These actions often ignore the needs of women in design, planning or management.
Urban sanitation is a complex responsibility tasked to multiple agencies at three levels of administration for the National Capital Territory of Delhi. For reasons of restrictive policy emphasis and incoherence in coordination and functioning of these systems, sanitation deprivation, and consequently open defecation, persists.
With 48% of households defecating in the open, many of them urban poor, sanitation deprivation and open defecation continue to be intertwined with poverty in Delhi. The national capital of the welfare state has undertaken several initiatives- such as Urban Basic Services Programme in 1986, slum improvement and upgradation schemes post-1956, minimum services programme of 1974-78, basic services to urban poor scheme post 2005, and several other city and national level schemes where sanitation was a part of a larger housing, poverty alleviation schemes; to provide basic minimum facilities of sanitation and water supply to these deprived pockets, but the envisaged benefits are yet to trickle down.
Toilet stories from these deprived pockets may differ, but the demand of the deprived remains the same: “Build us toilets we can use!”
In realising the dream of an open-defecation-free India, including Delhi, some of the answers, illuminated with the help of urban narratives with the most affected populations, may include the following:
Provision of adequate number of facilities for the targeted population to address issues of overcrowding and user by day, defecator by night;
Ensuring each outlet of waste is connected to a form of collection, treatment facility- on-site, off-site;
Ensuring adequate, constant supply of water, electricity;
Ensuring access to facilities within 500 metres distance to its users;
Maintenance on a daily basis;
Community policing for safety and security (being implemented by United Nations Office for Project Services or UNOPS in a few refugee camps across the world);
Written law and/or policy provision guaranteeing that access to usable facility is not affected by legal status of the deprived.
In the end, it is certain that we cannot expect open defecation and associated issues - of environmental contamination, health and education implications, loss of productivity – to be eliminated by the mere provision of a toilet facility.
As urbanists, do we be bystanders and watch as honest tax-payers’ money goes down a drain, for a pan-India Mission which is not eradicating open defecation as envisaged? Do we settle for simple policy critiques? Or, do we try to chalk out ways forward to truly and completely eradicate open defecation from the capital of India?
The choice is ours!
REFERENCES
[1] Delhi Development Authority, 1982. Master Plan of Delhi-1962, New Delhi: Akalank Publications.
[2] Delhi Development Authority, 1990. Master Plan of Delhi-2001, New Delhi: Delhi Development Authority.
[3] Delhi Development Authority, 2010. Master Plan of Delhi-2021, New Delhi: Delhi Development Authority.
Mahak Agrawal is an urban planner, researcher from India. Presently working on the issue of sanitation deprivation and climate crisis response across coastal districts of India and urban India in the north, she has served as an expert reviewer to the Second Order Draft of the IPCC Special Report on Climate Change and Land.
She is also a Local Pathways Fellow to the United Nations Sustainable Development Solution Network (UN-SDSN). With her project: A Dream of Open Defecation free India? Decolonise and Innovate urban sanitation; Mahak is leading an online petition with the support of Change.org foundation, sholding Government of Delhi accountable for Human Rights to sanitation to urban poor with key emphasis on females, children and differently abled, with the campaign’s demand to audit these facilities, for their usability.
In different capacities, she has worked with non-profit organisations, development banks, universities and research institutes, as well as technical divisions of government-at the Centre and city level in India. Next to her contribution to the United for Smart Sustainable Cities (U4SSC) initiative, Mahak explores innovative, enduring research-guided solutions for pressing urban and regional environmental problems. She is specifically interested in climate change and urban studies investigating multi-track approach and inequalities of adaptations and transformations, development and geography, associated global challenges and human geography.
An advocate of open data for effective urban management, monitoring and response, she often provides thought leadership to the Young Academic Network of the Association of European Schools of Planning (AESOP) and the South Asia Centre at London School of Economics. In 2017, she was awarded the Prof. V.N. Prasad Best Thesis Award for best thesis in Master of Planning in India.