Penny wise and pound foolish

“No one knows why the
willow weeps
With its hair dank to the stream
But Bachchoo is glad the
willow keeps
Its secret — unlike
The bore who describes
his dream”
From Moby Dikra (A Parsi Opera)

An article in an English newspaper says that the citizens of Delhi and perhaps other cities will now be paid a rupee every time they volunteer to use a public toilet. The article didn’t say how this scheme is to be implemented. As part of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Gandhian promise to clean up India’s streets and unsanitary urban surroundings, the government will, of course, foot the bill.

I suppose, even with the world troubled by terrorism, earthquakes, shady football and cricket deals, corruption, starvation, literary prizes and other disasters, this piece of news attracted the attention of a British editor because in Britain one pays increasing amounts to use public toilets. When I first came to Britain the charge for entrance to a public toilet was famously a penny. An attendant collected the fee and let you in. Over the years, this fee has increased in quantum leaps and now stands at 20 or even 30 pence — which is 20 or 30 rupees!

The entrances to public toilets have been mechanised. You put your money in the slot and the metal barrier opens to let a single person in. The desperate, stingy, bold or impecunious jump over the metal barriers for a free visit, risking arrest and prosecution! When the fee was a penny in the gender-segregated toilets, one would find a very common verse of graffiti scribbled on the walls of the male-toilet booths. It went:

“Here I sit,
Broken-hearted
Paid my penny
And only f____d (a word for passing wind which may not be acceptable in a respectable family newspaper)”

I am intrigued as to how the rupee incentive would be paid for using an Indian toilet. Could one, for instance, go into the same or different toilets in the day a hundred times and garner a hundred rupees? Or do they mark your thumb with indelible ink as they do in election booths to ensure that you don’t vote again? But then needing a toilet is not like voting — there’s no ban on doing repeatedly. How is toilet-fraud to be avoided?

It must be that the rupee scheme is to apply to towns and cities and not to the rural areas. The government scheme to build public toilets surely starts with the populous cities and then moves to towns and villages. As Mr Modi has noticed, the need for them in the cities is pressing. The old notices which said “Commit No Nuisance” were, by and large, ignored as people committed their “nuisance” directly under them. Then there was the prohibitive incentive of plastering tiles with religious symbols and pictures of deities to appeal to the fear of divine retribution. This tactic works demonstrably for showers of red paan spittle, but can’t be effective against the use of open spaces as toilets.

Talking of which, in Mumbai one night, out for a walk with friends in the tepid summer, we descended from the road to a beach which borders one of the inhabited peninsulas of the north. The moon was bright over the ocean that night and by its light, as we progressed along the beach we could see rows of women squatting at the edge of the waters with brass or other utensils, calling out to each other, talking, laughing and getting on with a mass, ritualised defecation. Modesty and olfactory anxiety made us turn back and get off the beach. These were women, perhaps a hundred of them, from the shanties at the end of the beach. I don’t suppose they had a choice of toilets and used the cover of the dark to do their thing where the tides and waves would wash it away.

For the dwellers of Indian shanties the toilets that the government promises will involve a new discipline. For the British public, who have had the facility of pub and public toilets for very many decades, there is no excuse for urinating in the shared hallways of housing estates or in public phone booths. But obviously the London municipal authorities have noted this growing violation and, just as India has “Commit No Nuisance” slogans, have plastered posters on phone booths which say “IS THIS A PUBLIC TOILET? NO!”

The proliferation of McDonalds and Kentucky Fried Chicken fast food outlets has also contributed to free toilet use. These establishments, as restaurants, are legally obliged to provide free toilet facilities to their clients. I have noticed that the workers in these places are much too busy dishing out fried foods to supervise and separate the clients from the people who have dropped in to use the toilet. The other resource is, of course, the five-star hotel. One goes in pretending that you are visiting a guest or have set up a rendezvous in the lobby and then when the receptionists and bouncer are off guard, sneaks off to the perfect facilities.

The present Indian government, through its plans and incentives has openly acknowledged the “problem”. A few decades ago, V.S. Naipaul wrote An Area of Darkness — his first book on India. He noted with disapproval that Indians used the streets, the railway sidings and very many other places as open toilets. The contention gave rise to deeply nationalistic injury and resulted in published denials, denunciations and even abuse of the writer. The more generous criticism followed the line that he couldn’t possibly understand India. The harsher critiques said he was an agent of a neo-imperialism.

The denial on the part of Indians didn’t remain absolute. Twenty years after Naipaul’s observation, Sulabh toilets began to appear as an Indian initiative to face the issue. Now Mr Modi’s government has made “Swachch Bharat” a policy aim which should, according to public health officials, go some way towards preserving the health of the nation.