When said to imagine a situation where you are bitten by a snake, you would probably imagine yourself trekking or in a river. But would you ever imagine in your wildest dreams that you would be killed by a snake during your morning business. That is the situation of a majority of people living in the Terai region. The lack of a single toilet in their house leads them to defecate in fields, or at river banks. While a portion of the country is debating over whether to have one toilet for each room the other portion is searching for a safe open place, where they can be safe from snakes while hiding from the hissing humans eye.
The act of having to defecate outside comes with its own threats. The first has to do with the health aspect. It is a well known fact that various diseases transfer from feces. Having a clean toilet to dispose it should be considered a privilege. But the people who are not granted with that privilege are prone to get more diseases. Not only the person but this trend is also affecting the environment. There might be an argument that the feces are useful for the farm of crops, but to what extent and in what form? The number of people without toilet is pretty high, even those who have installed toilet are going to other alternative purely out of habit. So this number creates a huge mess and pollutes the surrounding. The smell also makes living hard for the people of the surrounding places.
The other problem would be security and safety. We are not the only ones out in the open, so there is little to no privacy. People might walk right past you, or even in some cases misuse this opportunity. There have been some cases of rape resulting from this tendency. Women and girls have to go out alone at odd times of the day and so become targets at critical situations. Not only people, defecating in the wild means people encounter various creatures, such as snakes, scorpion, various insects and even wild animals which may attack. Some cases have even led to death.
In today’s age of advancement and development, this situation is shameful. While some people are incorporating attached bathrooms to each of their rooms and installing hi-tech automatic flushing, seatwarming toilets, others don’t even have a simple toilet with a running water. This difference is astonishing. The lack of any changes despite the awareness programs indicates how futile these programs are. The structure of the programs must be revised and should be reaching the people of every district. This should even be made mandatory. Before making any revisions we must first conduct a research among the people, regarding why they are not able to make toilets or if they have why they aren’t using it. With the findings we can approach the problem with new perspective and try to make changes which will give one toilet for one house. This initiative will help solve life threatening problems in the Terai and various other toilet deficient areas.
Complaining to a Grey Machine 