Open defecation: From an old habit to poverty, why field trips haven’t stopped

GURUGRAM: Going to the fields in the morning is a routine some find hard to get out of. Others find the exercise therapeutic. “We do have a toilet in the house. But going to the fields is a social routine where women go out together. It helps keep our knee joints in shape,” a 70-year-old woman told this correspondent in Gurgaon’s Alipur village.

The government declared Gurgaon open-defecation free in October 2017 after aggressively building toilets in rural areas and running extensive campaigns to sensitise people. It undertook these initiatives across the state and did, indeed, succeed in changing the ground situation as far as availability of toilets go. But it also hastily declared all its rural areas ‘open-defecation free’.

A majority of houses in villages do have toilets now. Those that don’t in villages like Berka, Dunela, Alipur and Ghamroj, say they are too poor to build one and want the government to do so. “The government aid is insufficient to build a toilet,” said Ram Pal Singh of Berka, a village situated off Sohna Road.

A kilometre and a half from here is Dunela. “Most houses in the village now have toilets and people have stopped defecating in the open. A few, however, continue the age-old practice and for some elderly people, it is more a matter of habit,” said Fazreena, a resident.

In the urban areas of the district, too,

open defecation

continues in slums and unauthorised colonies, particularly in areas such as Sikanderpur, Chakkarpur, Dundahera and Kapashera where landlords did not provide toilets in the small tenements they built to rent out.

According to a volunteer working with MCG, these areas also have water shortage, which leads to common toilets being soiled most of the time. “If one has access to clean toilets, why would they go out and defecate in the open? The government has to ensure clean toilets and sufficient water supply,” said the volunteer, requesting anonymity.

The other place where open defecation is rampant is empty plots within Huda sectors. “Migrants who work as auto drivers or domestic helps and live in shanties are forced to defecate in the open as they have no toilets,’’ said Amit Saxena, a resident of Sector 71.

MCG officials have said they have built 67 public toilets, two community toilets, deployed 66 mobile toilet vans and installed 137 portable toilets at various places in Gurgaon.

According to the central government, a city or ward can be declared open defecation free if at any point in a day, not a single person is found defecating in the open. The other conditions are: all households that have space for toilets, have constructed one; occupants of households that do not have space for toilets have access to a community toilet within 500 metres; all commercial areas have public toilets after every one kilometre; and a mechanism for imposing fines on people found defecating in the open has been put in place.


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