Basic bug!!!!

TO(I)LET FACILITY :

Sanitation is India’s biggest problem. 700 million people have no toilets in their homes. In slums, there are no toilets. So a huge population has to use open areas to answer nature’s call. India today has nearly ten million bucket toilets that are manually cleaned by scavengers. We cannot let his continue. 700,000 children die every year due to diarohea and dehydration caused by poor hygiene. Many schools in rural India do not have toilets and this is one of the main reasons why girls dropout from school once they cross the primary level. Can we let this continue?

Gandhiji drew attention to the problem of sanitation, but we did not have the technology at that time to figure out how to go about building easy to build and maintain toilets in India. The British built the first sewerage system in India in 1870. After 130 years, out of 4,500 cities only 232 are sewer based. Only 20 per cent of the urban population has septic tank toilets.

The challenge for India is huge. The sewers in Delhi, for instance, were designed for a population of three million. Delhi now has a population of 14 million. The challenge is to provide appropriate, affordable and culturally acceptable toilets. It sounds difficult, but it is possible.

Sulabh has now come up with a compost flush toilet that has two pits. One can be used at a time. When one is full, the other can be used while the first one is quickly turned into fertilizer. It is built in such a way that it requires only two litres to flush it while a conventional toilet needs as much as ten litres. This is the best design for India. Instead of a septic tank, we have now come up with a biogas digester that will convert human waste to gas that can be used for cooking and also to produce electricity. The wastewater discharged from toilets contains nutrients like phosphorous and so if we pass this water through charcoal and ultra violet rays, it will be ideal for agriculture as there will be no coliform, no pathogens and no bacteria.