As top-down toilets go wrong, can community-run loos bind neighbourhoods together?

Why do municipal toilet blocks in poor neighbourhoods frequently fall into disrepair? Are flush toilets sustainable in slums? Must slums remain filthy places in which people defecate in public? Do the urban poor have the skills and commitment to clean up their neighbourhoods?

A paper from the Society for the Promotion of Area Resource Centres (SPARC) describes how three Indian community-focused non-governmental organisations (NGOs) have successfully promoted locally-designed and managed toilet blocks now used by over half a million low-income urban dwellers in eight cities. The authors show that building a toilet, like any amenity, has potential to transform people’s perceptions of the place in which they live, and the way they interact with each other and with external authorities.

Municipal investment in sanitation in India’s slums is scanty. Resources allocated for sanitation often remain under-utilised. Contractors liaise with officials not communities. Toilet block designs are often inappropriate, and limited water supplies make personal hygiene and toilet-cleaning difficult. Officials charged with maintaining and unblocking toilets are usually negligent. Within three months most toilets are unspeakably filthy, leaving locals little choice but to defecate in nearby public spaces.

The authors note that:

• International donors prefer big projects and do not see public toilets or community toilets as an appropriate solution.
• Politicians often oppose community-managed processes which remove from their control the patron-client relationships with slum populations through which they sustain their careers.
• Community management goes against the long and dishonourable tradition of contractors, engineers and councillors raking off funds via inflated cost estimates.
• As many slums are on land belonging to state agencies, municipalities are often blocked from providing sanitation or other amenities lest this legitimates residency rights.

The community-designed blocks described in the paper differ from municipal models as they are bright, well-ventilated, easier to keep clean and cheaper to build. Large water storage tanks ensure enough water for hand-washing. Separate entrances and facilities for men and women give women more privacy than in municipal toilets. Provision is made for the needs of children.

Toilets and their well-kept surrounds have become meeting places in which all take pride. Communities strive to improve designs and to share and gain experience. Transparency in relations between community representatives, NGOs and municipalities has removed opportunities for misappropriation of funds and building materials.

Policy-makers and sanitation specialists are urged to:

• accept that sanitary toilets with wash facilities are affordable and manageable
• ensure that standards of community toilets are relevant to the needs and means of those who use them
• put women at the centre of designing, building and maintaining toilet blocks and equip them with organisational and skills to pass on to other women
• accept that sewers remain the tried and tested solution to urban sanitation needs – non-flush toilets have yet to demonstrate their viability in crowded environments
• recognise that slums are home to those who actually build cities – masons, pipe layers, cement mixers, brick carriers, stone cutters, trench diggers and metal fabricators: it is they, not municipal engineers with their bureaucratic procedures and rigid standards, who are the real experts when it comes to building toilets.

Source(s):
‘Community-designed, built and managed toilet blocks in Indian cities’ by Sundar Burra, Sheela Patel and Thomas Kerr, Environment & Urbanization Vol 15 No 2, pp11-32, October 2003 Full document.

Funded by: Department for International Development, UK

id21 Research Highlight: 4 February 2004

Further Information:
Sheela Patel and Sundar Burra
Society for the Promotion of Area Resource Centres (SPARC)
PO Box 9389
Mumbai 400 026
India

Contact the contributor: sparc1@vsnl.com

Society for the Promotion of Area Resource Centres (SPARC)

Tom Kerr
Asian Coalition for Housing Rights (ACHR)
73 Soi Sonthiwattana 4
Ladprao Road, Soi 110
Bangkok 10310
Thailand

Contact the contributor: achr@loxinfo.co.th

Asian Coalition for Housing Rights (ACHR)

Other related links:
'Water Delivery’s poor cousins: Sanitation and Hygiene in Urban Environments'

'Pipelines to Partnerships' - Homeless International

Kanpur Slums Sanitation Project

'Community toilets in Pune and Other Indian Cities Community' - UN-HABITAT

'If We Walk Together: Communities, NGOs, and Government in Partnership for Health' - The World Bank Group

Community Water and Sanitation Facility

'Urban Sanitation in Low-income Areas of Bangalore'