The tree-lined road to equality

Published here on October 11, 2013.

“X” built broad roads around the country, with large shady trees on either side.

• Thanks to “X” generosity, dharamshalas were built along the highways where travellers could rest for the night.
• In “X”’s kingdom, an old woman could walk on the road at midnight with a pot of gold on her head and be unharmed.

Who was “X”? The problem with this as a quiz question is that in the narrative of South Asian history, “X” was any king commonly considered exemplary—Sher Shah, Harsha, the Kings of Kandy in Sri Lanka, any good king. As a student, if you had a broad sense of the reputation of the king, these were elements of a safe exam answer. For us, as we ponder governance, these are indicators we have always considered available, accessible, usable and well-maintained infrastructure a measure of quality.

Good, broad, well-lit roads, with large, shady trees on either side immediately make you feel good and dispose you well towards the powers that be (especially if you don’t live in such a place). In India, sometimes driving from one constituency into another, you can feel the difference in the roads—and sense the difference in how much local representatives care about their voters. When you travel from a congested city with narrow, crowded roads to a modern planned city like Chandigarh or parts of New Delhi, that exclamation, “Great roads!” is always accompanied by a little envy, “Lucky people!” 

A good road and the ability to travel on it have always been important constituents of gender equality.

Although tradition and patriarchy (are they the same?) dictate that a woman’s place is at home, the fact is that home-related responsibilities always take women outside. Till date, women go out to collect water—from rivers, from wells, from tanks and from the local tap which gets water at midnight on alternate nights. Paths are made by feet walking up and down to collect water. Making potable water available to everyone in their homes is good governance, but making it possible and safe to go out to collect water is also important. So paving and lighting that path, building steps where necessary and creating transport options should be on the agenda of government.

Lighting the stove to boil the water to make it potable also requires a long hike for women in many communities, as they have to walk to the nearby forest area to gather firewood. Clean, easily available, renewable sources of fuel for cooking are also an appropriate governance priority.

Electricity, not something that Samudragupta and Sher Shah had to worry about, has become a necessity today. There are two important reasons why a steady supply of electricity is a gender issue. First, good lighting is critical for women’s safety. Well-lit roads, well-lit public bathrooms and roads to bathrooms, well-lit homes, well-lit compounds, parking lots, stairwells and landings—all make a huge difference to how safe women feel. The fear of what lurks in the dark is hard to shake off, and even if lighting will not stop a determined assailant, it does dissuade opportunists.

Second, given the number of women who run small and/or home-based enterprises, the kind of power shortages that states like Tamil Nadu have lived with, hit them hardest. When you cannot work or run your equipment for most hours of the day, and your income does not extend to spending on diesel for a generator, power shortages must force a decline in living standards, often to the brink of poverty. Also, it is harder for young girls to sit alone and study under a street lamp, so prolonged power cuts will at some point hit their access to education. And this brings us back to the question of well-lit roads—that allow girls to attend evening classes and night-school and early morning sports.

For some distances, roads are not enough. In Tamil Nadu, a few decades ago, teaching women to cycle and giving them bicycles was found to improve their mobility, their education and livelihood prospects, their sense of confidence and empowerment. Buses may be necessary, with either mixed or segregated seating, but always with well-lit and clean bus-stands that perhaps have a security monitor or an emergency phone. In large cities, rail-based transit systems make a difference; but they make a difference only if the subways to the stations, the station platforms themselves and the trains are safe. A government that is serious about women’s equality is a government that invests in public transportation that is reliable, safe and accessible. I grew up long ago in a Bombay that was safe for women; and one important piece of that was surely that the city had safe and reliable public transportation. Growing up in such a place gave me the confidence that I could do anything I wanted; no matter where life led, there would be a bus to take me there and back safely!

For women, public toilets are a vital element of infrastructural development—and not the kind whose location you can smell two kilometres away. Chennai, for instance, has only 714 public toilets for a city its size, a local research organization found, and most of these were in terrible shape. And Chennai is not unusual. In a country which is trying to get people to build toilets in their homes, clean and usable public toilets may be too much to ask. But that woman who sells coconut water all day near your office would have to do without a toilet all day. And the woman sales executive who sells detergent from door to door has no access to a toilet, so that must limit the number of days she can work. That men should have access to public toilets is also important to women who, in many areas, cannot walk down a road that is not lined by urinating men. (We have come such a long way in terms of what lines our roads.) Can you imagine what it is like for adolescent girls to walk past that sight on the way to school or back?

An easy conclusion for this article would be that governments should pay attention to infrastructure issues, but to my mind, each of these instances makes the case for infrastructure to be taken on more explicitly as a feminist issue. The women’s movement talks about access to public spaces in the context of safety. We also talk about it in the context of livelihoods. Some of us make the case that women are as entitled to enjoying public spaces as others are. But what we need to see and hear more of is feminists engaging in research and advocacy on infrastructural issues, town-planning and urban design. Women need to develop both technical expertise and advocacy skills in these areas. These women already exist, but we need to create high profile platforms for their work.

Equality in social and political relations depends on equality of access to educational, livelihood and other opportunity, and access depends largely on the quality of infrastructure. Being able to count on good infrastructure frees individuals up to lead creative and productive lives. Women, who are usually saddled with responsibility for water, food, fuel and other domestic support and supplies, bear the brunt of poor infrastructure, forever limited by its constraints and fearful of its consequences. A government’s lack of commitment to women’s rights may be obscured by its verbiage, but can clearly be read in the quality and quantity of its infrastructural investments. Which roads are being built; which facilities are being created and how accessible they are to women; whether public transportation systems are being imagined and how; whether public toilets are merely the subject of competitive polemics—are clear indicators of where female citizens stand. And so far, where we stand is nowhere.

Swarna Rajagopalan trained as a political scientist, works as an independent scholar and runs Prajnya.  

Talking toilets

I was at an IFMR seminar this morning, a presentation on public toilets in Chennai by the Transparent Chennai project team.

I learned many things, and I want to share my notes here in the interest of public debate on the issue.
Please note I am just typing the notes I jotted down, without checking or polishing them. At some point all this information should be available on their website, if it isn't already.

• We don't really know how many toilets there are in Chennai. An IFMR team member quoted the 2001 census as showing 600,000 toilets for 800,000 houses. 
• The question is how to reach the 'open defecation-free' goal: septic tanks? sewage connections? 
• The public toilets that there are are used in a variety of ways, from their intended use, to bathing, to washing. 
• Transparency Chennai visited zonal offices to ascertain how many public toilets in each zone. They came up with a count of 572. They filed an RTI to get an official number, and the response was 715. 
• In North Chennai, they found 49 public toilets for over 400,000 people. 
• The norm is supposed to be 60 users per toilet seat, but of course, there are far more users than that in many places.
• And many toilets don't get used, especially by women and children. The researchers heard many explanations for that: blocked latrines; blocked sewers; varying (random?) user charges; poor maintenance; cracked ceiling; no door; no lights; leaky taps; no water.
• Mothers found the open ground more sanitary for their children's use. 
• Safe disposal of waste was also a problem. 
• Here, I want to mention the Menstrual Hygiene Management Consortium, a Trichy NGO represented at the discussion. All of us forget that the disposal of sanitary waste is also an important consideration in creating sanitation systems. 
• The EXNORA team member at the table made the point that sanitation and public conveniences are ultimately the responsibility of local government and the most useful thing civil society can do is to facilitate their learning and planning, rather than take over their work. 
• The question of accountability came up again and again. When the state contracts out toilet construction to companies, which contract out maintenance to others, who contract caretakers... who is accountable for the state of a toilet.
• The distinction made in the discussion between community toilets (in slums, for instance, for the use of residents); public toilets (in stations, markets, etc) and mandatory toilet facilities in workplaces (like the crowded congested stores in T.Nagar) was useful here in delineating responsibility. There was discussion about regulation, coordination, etc. 

Interesting session, which I hope will open a good conversation on this issue, and some action.

Building toilets in Trichy

Isher Judge Ahluwalia writes in today's Indian Express about a grassroots project that has provided many in Trichy with proper toilets. Worth noting, worth applauding, worth emulating.

Isher Judge Ahluwalia,  SHE creates a WAVE of change in Trichy, Indian Express, April 27, 2011.

On the street where I live

(with apologies to Lerner and Lowe)

"I have often walked down this street before..."

and it's always littered with garbage and attended by a faint whiff of the open urinals that are the small streets leading us from here to the famous bazaar road that runs parallel to our street.

"But the pavement always stayed beneath my feet before..."

There's no pavement here. Nor in in the streets that surround it. And in that famous bazaar, the pavement has been taken over by vendors, leaving no room to reach the shops from an auto that parks on the road.

"All at once am I, several storeys high..."
Knowing-just-what-it's-like-on-that-street.

"Are there lilac trees in the heart of town?

Can you hear a lark in any other part of town?"

"Does enchantment pour out of every door?"

No, it's not just the street where I live.

"People stop and stare, they don't bother me."

There's nowhere else on earth I wouldn't rather be.

Let the time go by, they don't care if I, can't bear the stench of the street where I live...

And oh the-ghastly-feeling, just to know they never clean here.

The ooooo-verpowering reeling from the smell that may suddenly appear..

"People stop and stare, they don't bother me."

If it made a difference to how clean my street might be

I would bus them here, show them how it feels

to walk here, on this street where I live.

A visit to the Ladies' Toilet in a Most Important Place

Caution: Gross details follow.
Yesterday, I visited the building where the headquarters of a very important government organization were housed. It was a long morning and as I waited for my meeting, it seemed like a sensible idea to visit the rest-room.
I wasn't expecting luxury, I assure you. I stepped in, gingerly. It was not very clean but I have seen worse in my lifetime as an Indian woman. I thought I would pull the flush.
The split second that followed was like a moment in the heart of the special effects of a horror film. Water rushed out in a torrent..... around my feet! I ran out of the stall as if chased by a vampire or an avenging banshee.
It took me a few minutes to compose myself. As I narrated this story later on, it was also funny. But outrage also remains with me.
This is the only ladies' restroom on the floor that houses the CEO of the organization. What if the CEO were a woman? What happens to the women who work there (and by the way, I barely recall seeing any)? What is the plight of women who visit for all-day meetings?

We organize a 16-day campaign against gender violence in Chennai and one part of the campaign addresses the issue of a good working climate for women in the context of workplace harrassment, but this is even more fundamental. How can you go to work in a place which doesn't bother with the upkeep of the most basic lavatory facilities for women? Perhaps the men's toilets are as bad, but is that an excuse or a consolation?

Why don't we care about these very basic amenities? How can a person go to work if their stomach is even slightly upset? How is a woman to work during her menstrual period or in the last stages of her pregnancy when she would need to use the toilet more often?

The conference room is airconditioned but the kitchen and pantry area are not built for hygiene. The executive office wears a designer label but the toilets are ghastly. The campus is manicured but the road approaching it is an open sewer. I am not writing about any one office or institution. This place is everywhere, and we have all suffered it.
On a day when the world is discussing President Barack Obama's Nobel Peace Prize, I suggest that the most appropriate recipient for this honour should be a person who has made toilets, hygiene and sanitation their priority--whoever it is.

PS: On my own bathroom water-banshee attack experience, I should add that when I ran out, I could not wash my hands because the soap-dispenser was empty and there was barely a trickle of water coming out of the taps. Luckily (for those who will rightfully worry) I always carry wet wipes and I could somehow assuage my own sense of 'ugh' before stepping back outside.

Sanitation newswatch continues

How did I miss this one?

Yamini Aiyar, No toilets please, we’re Indian, Indian Express, November 20, 2007.

Somewhere, someone... cares!

2008 is the International Year of Sanitation, the UN Secretary-General has declared.

Do also check out WaterAid's report on The State of the World's Toilets 2007.

Finally, I propose that now that Ratan Tata is done with his one-lakh car project, he turn his attention and ability to get things done to another people's need: public toilets in India. I think that Shahrukh Khan, whose views resemble mine on this topic, join forces with him. Between them, we may actually solve this problem to my satisfaction: Tata will get things done, and SRK will convince people it is what they always wanted.

That may well be my Pongal wish for India! And if the two of them pay heed to my blog post, I will strongly recommend their names for the Bharat Ratna.

January 14 Postscript: Darn, someone else got to Ratan Tata first! Reeba Zachariah reports in the Times of India that he is going to work on clean water provision next. Just remember: I am next in line with my idea!

Say it again, sister!

Anubha Yadav, Last waterloo, Indian Express, November 7, 2007.

Gandhi and me (and you, if you like)

Everyone is writing about Gandhiji, why not me?

Earlier this year, I read Rajmohan Gandhi's 'Mohandas' and found it utterly absorbing. Having grown up on a mind-numbing diet of Gandhian hagiographical texts that caricatured and rendered him boring, I was captivated to discover him as a person, and a person I could have related to, in this account.

Six months after that reading, the image that stands out the most in my mind is that of a person all alone in spite of the crowd around. There is actually a paragraph in which the author signals this, but as the story of Gandhi's life moves towards its conclusion, it is hard to miss. When everyone called him Mahatma, placed him on a pedestal, asked him for advice, to whom could he have said: I am not sure or I don't know why but I just feel low today? To his credit, he did not hesitate to voice doubt. He was not encumbered by the need to keep up appearances. If he was not sure or if he found himself inconsistent, we know it now. 'Satyameva jayate,' but the point of departure with Gandhi was that he was as honest with himself and about himself with others as he could muster. This is greater heroism than camping in strife-torn Noakhali, in my view. Harder to overcome the impulse to construct a heroic meta-narrative for one's own life than anything else.

Also difficult, the need to align one's life and ideology, one's personal habits and one's rhetoric, and Gandhi tried to do this admirably and annoyingly; he was evangelical about some of these things. But as I write this, I think that for all my blogging about the lack of public sanitation, if I were Gandhi, I would probably go out there and start cleaning up after people. Now the moment I say that, this Gandhian streak seems less annoying and more admirable.

In fact, the alignment of personal and political in Gandhi's life is remarkable because of the way it manifests. In our day, it is more common to see it in the form of friendships at best and patronage or nepotism at worst. For Gandhiji, it took two forms. The first is this need to walk the talk, to do what you say should be done. The second is closely aligned: a cultivation of personal qualities that have been valued by this civilization at all times.

These qualities begin with the ability to be true to yourself and to be honest. Gandhi's language reflects his deep roots in Indian ways of thinking and being, and being true to yourself is also being true to your dharma (however you define it). This is the second quality: courage of conviction, and doing what is right or righteous. Gandhi's references to Rama evoke not a mythical or historical personage as much as they do a set of values for public life: upholding dharma or law, carrying out one's duty, doing what is needed, taking action. (It is another matter that we may read those definitions of dharma or right action differently; but the right or even duty to define for oneself is surely part of this tradition.)

More than all of these, for years now, I have been struck by the idea that a satyagrahi must first meet some criteria before she can offer satyagraha (not wage, but offer). The notion that a degree of personal evolution is a prerequisite for political or public action moves me greatly. It resonates with the important Indian value that saiyyam (self-control or self-discipline, but less negatively) is to be cultivated by all persons and personages. The Puranas are full of stories about gods (Indra, most often) who are unable to control their lusts, their egos, their anger. Indra's repeated fall from grace is a mythical illustration of Shantideva's advice that a moment of anger can be a monumental spiritual setback.

I will not declare here that all politicians are bad or politics stinks. But how many politicians or political activists can you think of that come into the public arena without avarice or ambition, without anger or without ego. Each of these is harder to lose than the one before. We may not seek fame and fortune in politics, but how much better is it if your activity is constantly fueled by anger?Nowadays, I find that perpetual outrage very hard to be around. Yes, there is a great deal to be outraged about, but witnessing the anger, one should be able to move without it towards action. And leaving behind ego? For most of us, it would be hard to separate our selves from our egos even intellectually.

Gandhi's view that the satyagrahi within has to cultivated before a person can offer satyagraha is therefore inspiring. It is irrelevant whether Gandhi or any other satyagrahi consistently and perfectly met this requirement. What is very relevant is the idea that social change begins within a single individual, that the individual's inner journey animates the public one.

This works on so many levels. If I am struggling and struggling with awareness and honesty that I am, I am more compassionate towards others, no matter what their challenges. Compassion enhances my identification with them, and motivates me to serve, surely an imperative in public life. The will to serve slowly diminishes the ego, as does the recognition that we are all the same. In the context of a long journey, small lapses are small; in the absence of that journey, there are only lapses.

As I grow older and want to commit more and more of my time to broader objectives, I find myself reflecting on this a great deal. My appreciation of Gandhiji's journey improves as I understand how profound his inner challenges must have been. At the same time, I grow fonder of him--almost as a family member--as I realize that his road and mine or yours are not that different. He too had to work hard at overcoming a liking for this or a distaste for that. He too had to learn patience. He had to learn to be honest, more and more honest. Because he acknowledged being challenged, it is easier to face our challenges. It was not his ambition to become a Mahatma, but by looking each situation in the eye and patiently seeking to resolve it, responding to the demands of each moment, and then being honest about his inner struggles each time, he became one.

Mahatma-hood has served Gandhiji ill. It has separated him from us. It has taken a quirky, lively person and made him a plaster-of-Paris saint cum cure for insomnia. It has created an industry of image-makers for this iconoclast. It has replaced the drama and colour of his life for vapid dialogues and insipid sepia tones. The Mahatma's life is told as a string of discrete events--born in Porbandar, went to South Africa, got pushed off a train, started a farm, came to India, became Father of the Nation--which obfuscate how he lived and who he was. None of this makes a difference to Gandhi, but what a loss to us!

Swachchha Narayani: A Goddess We Need

Sometimes when friends initiate discussions on random statements by politicians or are incensed about matters of high politics, I express my irritation with a dismissive statement which I really mean seriously: I think the most pressing policy issue in India may be the lack of public toilets, or sanitation. So I read this old blog entry by Madhu Kishwar with surprise and joy.

But seriously, why do we not consider sanitation and the provision of clean, public facilities to be important? Sometimes my mother remarks that I have been very lucky in my life: all my jobs have been at places with good bathrooms for women. This is no laughing matter. When you walk from Pondy Bazaar on a parallel road to the one we live off, you can follow the stench of urine to find your way. The path has other names but I call it 'Moothram' (urine) Alley. Yuck, indeed, but I persist in doing so in the hope that it will continue to remind us of work we have not done. And all the polluters on Moothram Alley are male. So what do the women do? Women exercise supreme control to the point of illness and disease.

This is a serious issue. It impinges on public health, public decency, workplace conditions, tourism prospects and women's security. This last is not a trivial listing. Women cannot walk down public paths for seeing men line up against walls. That can bar many urban roads and paths forcing women to take the long route, walk further for the same purpose. In Delhi on the JNU road, men don't even see walls. It is disgusting! Men can 'go' free but women must avert their eyes at all times, just in case. And don't offer me street food anyone--I don't even sit by windows in cafes! (And let me underscore, I have choices, others don't!)

More treacherous are reports that come from conflict and disaster contexts, where displaced women are unable to safely access the toilet. They have to walk a long way to reach the toilet and then it may be dirty, lack water or privacy. Women also have to walk by men to reach the toilet and are subject to harrassment along the way. This means they end up waiting to gather a critical mass even to just relieve themselves or that they go out before sunrise or after sunset. Infection and disease follow not from the disaster, but from these secondary conditions.

Swachchha Narayani does not come a day too soon into our lives. And she is not the first divine entity to be summoned to this cause. Many walls in India bear tiled images of gods and goddesses in the good faith that their divinity will secure the wall from such abuse.

In my schooldays, we had a subject called Community Living in which civic values of many sorts were imparted as lessons--do not litter, observe traffic rules, say thank you and sorry and so on. With the introduction of television, we saw short Films Division products that reemphasised the same values. Where are these now?

In Tamil Nadu (and I am sure elsewhere in India), why is colour television more important than public health? And why is the right of males to urinate and defecate at their pleasure the most carefully protected civil right? Is this what will change if there were more women in government? I hope so. In this case, I am willing to start India's non-partisan version of Emily's List, the US organization that supports pro-choice Democratic female candidates' election campaigns.

In this country, there are many problems and many inequities, but in my view, this one stinks the most!