The Culture, Power and Sanitation in India: Patterns of Transformation

With the growing population as well as urbanization, India has experienced the worsening of sanitation conditions over the decades. Open defecation and lack of proper disposal of garbage and human wastage have contributed most to the deterioration of sanitation and public environment. Urban slums, public places and rural areas are infamous for open defecation and poor sanitation, generally due to poor or no infrastructure. Recently the government as well as non-governmental organizations took up total sanitation campaign for making India defecation free under the UNDP’s development goals. Yet, toilets constructed specially for the urban poor and rural people, in many places, remain unutilized or non-functional, belying the goal. The problem is culturally embedded wherein individuals learn to keep their houses clean but responsibility for keeping environment clean is left for the government or somebody else- a class of scavengers in traditional power of the society. Such power hierarchy based on gender in family, as well as the scavengers’ class itself, seems to be working as it is mostly females who carry out major part of sanitation works. The people haven’t replaced their old habit with the new one of positive attitude which is essential for success of the national programme. Therefore, the need is to bring change in the culture (software) of the differentiated people, along with provision of toilets (hardware). Based on the data collected from local communities the paper analyses cultural and power bases of sanitation and suggests for combining of ideological change and infrastructural provision.