Dalit kids’ deaths in MP a reality check

The murder of two dalit children at Shivpuri in Madhya Pradesh for defecating in the open near a panchayat building last week serves as a shocking reminder of how heartless Indians can be. Beyond the challenge to civilisation, the incident in which Yadavs beat children to death with lathis because they defecated in the open as there was no toilet in their home is a reality check on claims made about India having become totally ODF, or “Open Defecation Free”. The family, which lost a 12-year-old girl and a 10-year-old boy, was denied a toilet although the village was declared ODF last year. Caste equations between dalits and Yadavs should bear the blame for the allotment of the use of public toilets in villages.

Noble as Swachchh Bharat’s intentions may be in following Mahatma Gandhi’s footsteps and his thinking that “sanitation was more important than independence”, the reality is quite different. Over nine crore toilets have been built, besides subsidies for individual toilets at home, since the sweeping social reform was heralded in 2014, but many toilets are not in use for lack of water or other issues. The Prime Minister’s claim in his UN General Assembly speech in New York that India would meet its ambition of becoming ODF on Mahatma Gandhi’s 150th birth anniversary on October 2 may be somewhat removed from the truth.

Of course, access to toilets doesn’t mean open defecation has ended. In fact, a survey showed that 23 per cent of people who own a toilet still defecate in the open, including in MP and Rajasthan, which have been declared ODF. Blame it on old habits dying hard or not, this peculiar problem does exist. Nevertheless, it is indubitable that toilets built under the Swachchh Bharat programme have proved a boon as they have made a world of difference to womenfolk who don’t have to stray into the open for their ablutions, with its concomitant dangers in rural areas.

To give up hope that Swachchh Bharat would eventually make a great difference would be an insult to the memory of Mahatma Gandhi, who had said “I will not let anyone walk through my mind with their dirty feet”. Having seen the difference in sanitation levels when living in South Africa, Gandhi was not just an ideator. He showed in his ashrams that he was equal to the task of cleaning the toilets himself.

It may be a sweeping generalisation that while a Chinese citizen keeps his city spotless, though his home may not be so clean, and Indian, on the other hand, tends to keep his house clean, while not caring a whit for public spaces. In a quirky way, that makes sense, but what doesn’t is why innocent children must be killed when India is only just moving on from V.S. Naipaul’s onetime description of it as one massive open toilet.