The Potty Project

We are happy to announce that we have launched the Potty Project...

Tue, 05 Apr 2011 11:23:00 +0530

We are happy to announce that we have launched the Potty Project website — pottyproject.in

We are at SACOSAN IV to launch the site and get feedback. Let us know what you think.

Dance depicting the awakening of the Lankan Lion at SACOSAN,...

Mon, 04 Apr 2011 15:36:28 +0530

Dance depicting the awakening of the Lankan Lion at SACOSAN, Colombo.

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We are at SACOSAN IV, Sri Lanka and are excited that we are going to be launching the potty project website on Wednesday! Watch this space for more!!

The Potty Project team is currently working as part of the team...

Mon, 03 Jan 2011 13:30:00 +0530

The Potty Project team is currently working as part of the team behind the upcoming UnBox Festival, a “festival celebrating action at the intersections of different disciplines. It is an attempt to build momentum around design thinking and inter-disciplinary collaborations as the means of driving more sustainable and impactive social and cultural change in India.” Applications for the festival’s fellowships and for the weekend-long conference are due January 10th - we look forward to receiving yours!

The Chennai Municipal Corporation does its bit to make...

Sat, 01 Jan 2011 16:38:00 +0530

The Chennai Municipal Corporation does its bit to make sanitation ‘creative’ !

Spotted at the Carnatic Music Festival in Chennai. Traditional Kolams made with bleaching powder to disinfect the roads. Who says sanitation has to be about boring solutions ?

And on an unrelated note Happy New Year ! We appreciate all the love and support :)

(Photo Source : Radha Sriram)

Key Takeaway 17 is “the design and planning of the built...

Tue, 07 Dec 2010 13:06:00 +0530

Key Takeaway 17 is “the design and planning of the built environment of a toilet establishes the rules of use.” When users clearly distinguish the toilet as a space being one that is indoors, they use it more responsibly. When users walk into a facility, there is a clear demarcation between the street outside and the space indoors. Since a clear distinction is established, users are less likely to litter indoors or defecate outside the toilet doors as they do in toilets that open directly onto an open courtyard.

Toilets are seen merely as a space for defecation. Sanitation facilities serve to mark out a space that different members of the community use to defecate - either inside or outside. Peer supervision discourages irresponsible use. Enclosed, unsupervised spaces provide cover for activities that are socially disapproved of. For example, not having toilet doors ensures that people won’t waste time and that others waiting in line for the toilet automatically know who is flushing and who isn’t

Key Takeaway 16 is “by disaggregating the tasks involved...

Tue, 07 Dec 2010 12:45:00 +0530

Key Takeaway 16 is “by disaggregating the tasks involved in using a sanitation facility, users’ sense of waiting time is altered.” For example, three queues of five minutes each are perceived to be less tiresome than one queue of fifteen minutes. In some toilet facilities, users are required to first queue up for collecting containers, then for filling water and finally for using the toilet booth. While the total waiting time for the users may be marginally less if all these facilities were available inside the toilet, having to go to different spaces and thereby breaking up the tasks creates a level of socialization that mitigates the frustration of waiting.

Key Takeaway 15 is “as caretakers of sanitation...

Tue, 07 Dec 2010 12:36:00 +0530

Key Takeaway 15 is “as caretakers of sanitation facilities, women have an upper hand in inter-gender negotiations.” In the context of toilet use, women are able to shame men into adhering to rules with regards to payment, proper use and cleanliness. In one toilet we visited, a mother sits with son because he would get bullied by people who don’t want to pay. With her around, she can force them to pay and they don’t quarrel with her.

Key Takeaway 14 is “efforts required for toilet...

Tue, 07 Dec 2010 12:29:00 +0530

Key Takeaway 14 is “efforts required for toilet care-taking are disproportionate to the incentives offered.” Terms on which the caretakers are employed are usually lop-sided. One caretaker we met is required to give Rs.475 per day to the contractor. Any amount in excess of that is his incentive, along with a set Rs. 2000 per month salary. However, to ensure higher use (and hence collect higher incentives), he is required to enforce payment by users, take care of law and order at the facility, run the facility smoothly (taking care of cleanliness, repair, maintenance) - most of which he is ill equipped to do, making the effort and incentives highly disproportionate.

Sharing responsibility amongst close family helps tide over the ﬁnancial inadequacy of the role and responsibilities of a caretaker. One caretaker makes his son ﬁll in for his absence when he visits from their village. The sharing of responsibility amongst close family or friend allows for supplemental income by creating additional time for other jobs.

Key Takeaway 13 is “toilet facilities are gender and age...

Tue, 07 Dec 2010 12:21:00 +0530

Key Takeaway 13 is “toilet facilities are gender and age specific but not gender and age sensitive.” There are many gender and age-related considerations which toilet designs fail to make. For example, for women, menstrual waste is a bigger shame than feces. Even though the toilet facilities are free for use by women, they contribute money once a week to pay the cleaner for cleaning all their sanitary waste . And even though Saraswati Ben, a resident of Mirzapur, has built her own toilet, she uses the public toilet to dispose her own sanitary waste and pays the caretaker a random sum of Rs.5-10 per month along with other women.

Toilets that segregate entrance based on gender/ age also fail to address other more pertinent sensitivity issues that users’ might face. For example, adolescent girls stop using children toilets much earlier than the boys their age. Also, pregnant women and older people have to wait in the same lines and climb slippery stairs to get to the toilet booths.

There is also a “dead-zone” in which children are too young (that is, physically small) to use community sanitation facilities and are too old to continue with sanitation behavior considered acceptable for kids. Kids below the age of 3-4 years old end up defecating at open spots near their house, either in open drains or in the open space near the community toilet. However, kids that are 5-6 years old typically still haven’t grown large enough physically to use the community’s sanitation facilities properly, though they’re usually considered too old to continue defecating in open areas within the community.

Key Takeaway 12 is “in a marginalized and an insecure...

Tue, 07 Dec 2010 12:07:00 +0530

Key Takeaway 12 is “in a marginalized and an insecure community, an anchor helps mobilize collective action.” Organizations give anchor and vision around which action can be mobilized. For example, Saraswati Ben in Mirazapur, Ahmedabad has been working with SEWA for the last 35 years. Through SEWA she has been able to inform residents of the slum networking project and mobilize support and patronage.

Fear of standing out is a deterrent for individual action and responsibility. Individuals are generally reluctant to stand out proactively and demand better civic service delivery for themselves or their community. To illustrate, Saraswati Ben in Mirzapur said “no one was willing to take the permit in their name for conducting the festival. I took the permit in my name because I have no fear.”

However, there are individuals within communities who are more progressive and civic minded than others. They are willing to be part of change initiatives. Dhanraj is an island of progressiveness at GP Block, Pitampura in Delhi. He is a tailor by profession, sells insurance policies to earn extra money and volunteers at an education focused NGO that teaches kids in his community. Over the past few years he has invested Rs. 3000 of his own money to build two public urinals and has participated in shaming drives to prevent open defecation. Individuals such as Dhanraj and Saraswati Ben can be catalysts in their communities when it comes to implementing sanitation facilities and initiatives.

Key Takeaway 11 is “behavior shifts are highly reactive...

Tue, 07 Dec 2010 11:57:00 +0530

Key Takeaway 11 is “behavior shifts are highly reactive and are reset by a resource constrained environment.” Temporary stimuli such as disease force users to consider a holistic shift in sanitation practice only for the duration of the illness. Essentially, the sanitation and hygiene habits of households are an equilibrium caused by opposing forces. Behavior changes can be instigated, but not are sustained until seen as an absolute necessity.

To illustrate, in slums, toilets are used under special circumstances in absence of which people revert to open defecation. People who are accustomed to open defecating may use the toilet only during rainy seasons when access to open fields becomes an issue. Many realize that continued use of a pit toilet will cause it to fill up more quickly which will be impossible/expensive to excavate. This knowledge and the realization that there are other alternatives to toilets makes it difficult to encourage individuals to use facilities even when they are available to them.

Key Takeaway 10 is “rituals and practices get established...

Tue, 07 Dec 2010 11:48:00 +0530

Key Takeaway 10 is “rituals and practices get established by emulating peers and are emergent as opposed to ‘top-down.’” Users of a shared community toilet passively co-create and adopt a “fair” system that gets established over time. Homogenous systems start falling into place when people begin imitating each other. For instance, many communities have a system of place-holding in lines, by setting down their water buckets to indicate their place in the queue. Another practice that has emerged in Janta Chawl in Mumbai is the practice of key-mapping, that is, distributing keys to families in the immediate area, in order to keep the toilets semi-private, and to give responsibility to those families to keep them clean.

Key Takeaway 09 is “caste lines and religious beliefs are...

Tue, 07 Dec 2010 11:43:00 +0530

Key Takeaway 09 is “caste lines and religious beliefs are a hindrance to participatory sanitation.” Users are apathetic towards the condition of shared sanitation facilities as they ascribe the responsibility of keeping it clean to a designated section of society. Religious beliefs are a strong hinderance to participate in maintenance or cleaning of community or even private toilets. Savita, resident of Ahmedabad, illustrates this issue, saying “we are followers of Goddess Laxmi and will not clean a toilet even if you pay Rs.100,000. The goddess just doesn’t allow it.”

Because of the stigma that comes with the maintenance of toilets and cleaning of human waste, decoupling managerial and cleaning responsibilities may make the community take the caretaker more seriously. If the community views the caretaker as a cleaner, they may ostracize him/her and not want to deal with them directly, because of perceptions around pollution due to exposure to and the handling of feces. Having the caretaker handle more of a managerial role, instead of a cleaning role, may encourage better relations between him and other community members.

Key Takeaway 08 is “close-knit and self-contained...

Tue, 07 Dec 2010 11:33:00 +0530

Key Takeaway 08 is “close-knit and self-contained sub-communities exist where the ties are simultaneously social, cultural, economic and religious.” Sub-communities share private infrastructure within themselves and may also restrict access to other sub-communities. They are also reluctant to access facilities and amenities placed within other sub-communities.

Because of the fractioning of facilities, many improvement opportunities are lost because the community does not mobilize around them. The lack of involvement of residents in the process of selecting a location for a toilet as well as providing inputs and opinions for how the facility should be structured means that the toilet facility often does not meet all the needs of the community.

Large income disparities within a small geography can also make it difficult for benefits to be equitably distributed. A discharge drain built by one household could easily have been used by others but because of cost issues, only one house did it while others have built small tanks that collects household waste water.

Key Takeaway 07 is “slum communities manifest multiple...

Fri, 03 Dec 2010 13:25:00 +0530

Key Takeaway 07 is “slum communities manifest multiple levels of transience that constrain people’s agency over their sanitary environment.” Residents of a slum are in a permanent state of transience regardless of the time they have spent in the community. The prospect of moving to a better place of residence, however remote, might stall action to improve one’s current situation, and keep people from investing in amenities related to sanitation.

Migrant workers sending money home view their situation simply as a way of earning money and are not concerned about their own hardships. A large proportion of migrant population in search of employment entails men living without their families. Recent migrants are also often blamed as the root cause of the problems. For example, a resident of Zamrudhpur, a vertical slum area in Delhi, said “I used to live in a different building which consisted of a large number of migrants. That building was much dirtier than my current one: there was lots of garbage left around and the toilets were very unclean.” This may be an indication of the way in which transience manifests itself in the quality of an individual’s living situation.

Key Takeaway 06 is “ownership and accountability is...

Fri, 03 Dec 2010 13:09:00 +0530

Key Takeaway 06 is “ownership and accountability is strongest within limited boundaries.” This implies that there are different rules for cleanliness within and outside the home. Existing community sanitation facilities lie outside the realm of household boundaries, therefore situating community sanitation facilities within users’ boundaries and control leads to their exhibiting the same behaviors they express in their households.

Having a clear identity around who owns the toilet drives responsible use. As long as the identity of ownership is clear and well established - whether it belongs to an individual or to an organization - people seem to comply with rules and treat it with respect. It is the instances in which it does not belong to any identifiable person that the facility suffers neglect.

Key Takeaway 05 is “consumption of sanitation as a...

Mon, 29 Nov 2010 19:28:00 +0530

Key Takeaway 05 is “consumption of sanitation as a “product” gets undermined by other priorities.” On the aspirational ladder, sanitation is only a subset of better housing. That is, as other lifestyle variables can be improved gradually over time, they are seen as easier to manage, whereas shifting to private sanitation (i.e. a household toilet) is perceived to require a high monetary investment, which is a hurdle for most households.

Generally, spending patterns are dependent on maintaining a balance between capacity for expenditure and an individual’s aspirations. The bulk of household expenditures are typically practical, and tend to include things that are deemed to be essentials. Occasionally, when finances allow, people will purchase products at a level above those deemed as necessary. However, adoption of products and brands relating to sanitation happens without understanding the value of “complete” hygiene, and hence their purchase might not be constant.

Individuals don’t understand that a single weak link in the chain of hygiene can cancel out the value of the sanitation-related products they purchase, potentially leading to disease. For example, using Dettol brand soap for it’s germ-killing properties, but not using it immediately after defecating, can compromise its effectiveness. Hand in hand with creating toilet facilities needs to be education and consciousness-raising about the need for proper hygiene practices, in order to insure that sanitation and health initiatives are fully effective.

Key Takeaway 04 is “personal hygiene rituals, activities,...

Mon, 29 Nov 2010 19:17:00 +0530

Key Takeaway 04 is “personal hygiene rituals, activities, and behaviors are approached as discrete events, not a coherent cluster.” Activities such as defecation, bathing, teeth brushing, and clothes washing all happen at different points because of the availability of alternative facilities. For example, open drains provide a “safe” passage for urine and children’s feces. Because of the presence of these drains where people can urinate and brush their teeth, children defecate, and household waste is dumped, the demand for spaces for these activities at community toilets is reduced.

Other activities such as bathing or washing clothes and utensils, happen outside the home or at shared water pumps where availability and drainage of water is less of an issue than it might be at toilets. Users store water at home and hence water intensive activities do not require additional labor. Drainage outside homes also provides an easy passage for the waste water. Therefore, there is a reduced need for bathing stalls at community toilets due the presence of handpumps and other water points located at different places in the community.

However, in semi-private toilet facilities where individuals have more control to the space (i.e. in communities where the residents can control access to the facilities), clothes and utensils are also washed at the toilet. Therefore, this tendency to divide activities based on the available facilities should be considered in the design of new toilet blocks and community sanitation approaches.

Key Takeaway 03 is “cleanliness has a common denominator...

Fri, 26 Nov 2010 14:30:00 +0530

Key Takeaway 03 is “cleanliness has a common denominator but hygiene does not.” To gauge the cleanliness of their surroundings, people typically rely on visual and olfactory cues. People perceive the potential source/cause of illnesses as visible dirtiness and smelly garbage, while invisible sources such as untreated water or germs spread through body to body contact are not readily identified. For instance, water needs to be visibly contaminated for people to perceive it as dirty Thus, individuals may keep themselves or their homes clean and feel that they are free of any risk of illness, despite drinking potentially contaminated water and having daily exposure to surrounding vectors of disease.

As the state of cleanliness of the shared toilets are well below the standards users have for their own homes, the challenge found in this key takeaway is how to transform users’ perspectives so that they apply the same standards of cleanliness they have in their own homes and immediate surroundings to share facilities and community toilets.

Key Takeaway 02 is “defecation in open fields is the...

Fri, 26 Nov 2010 13:59:00 +0530

Key Takeaway 02 is “defecation in open fields is the idealized reference for toilet experience.” Defecation in open fields is the common denominator for most slum residents, and hence has social approval. Often there is a sense of permissibility towards open defecation because a majority of urban slum residents come from villages where the practice is common and not taboo. Thus, they continue the habit after they have shifted to urban locations.

Defecation in fields is also often preferred to using any available community toilet facilities, as it allows for users to determine their own time and space within which the act of defecation gets completed. Those who use the toilets for multiple activities tend to set their routines so that they make only one trip to the community toilet in which they defecate, brush teeth, bathe, wash clothes etc. - therefore, using toilets tends to be more clinical compared to open field defecation.

Many individuals also prefer open defecating to using community toilets as an open environment facilitates a more pleasant experience than enclosed toilet facilities. Dark and dirty community toilets are viewed as a source of disease. However, in open fields the feces disintegrates quickly, providing a space that is perceived as cleaner and which has more options of spots to defecate.

This insight illustrates the challenge to overcome when considering sanitation approaches and initiatives in urban areas, as even in areas with limited open space, the act of open defecation continues. Not only do adults engage in open defecation in fields, but children will often defecate in public drains and streets outside of their homes. The pervasive act of open defecation and the preference many people have for it is one of the key challenges to overcome in the sanitation arena.