BackSana: Pipe dream comes true
A ₹3-crore Google grant is helping foster a two-pronged approach to build water treatment-cum-bio-toilet complexes
PremiumAn inoculum of bacteria can consistently accomplish what a team of humans often will not: keep community toilets sludge and stink-free.
Around two years ago, the Defence Research and Development Organization (DRDO) made its “bio digester" toilet technology available for civilian use. Built for use by the Armed Forces in remote areas that don’t have a septic tank or access to a sewage network, the bio-toilets use bacteria to break human waste down into biogas and an odourless liquid—both of which can be reused.
Two years ago is also when Delhi-based charitable trust Social Awareness Newer Alternatives (Sana) started realizing that its initial mandate of improving drinking water to meet World Health Organization (WHO) standards was only half the battle in project sites where open defecation is a common practice.
Indians are the worst offenders in South Asia on the open defecation parameter. A 2014 update on the WHO/Unicef Joint Monitoring Programme for Water Supply and Sanitation shows that 48% Indians were still defecating in the open in 2012. Nepal (at 40% of the total population), Pakistan (23%), Bangladesh (3%), China (1%), and Sri Lanka (0), all fared better on the study.
Indeed, in 2012, Sana’s first project at the east Delhi government school Rajkiya Pratibha Vikas Vidyalaya (RPVV), Surajmal Vihar, got a water treatment plant only. It draws power from solar panels of 4-kilowatt capacity, takes water from a bore well, passes it through a treatment unit that can generate 1.8 million litres of clean water a year for the children to use while at school and take back home, if they choose, in 5 litre cans.
Sanchaita Gajapati Raju, the 31-year-old founder of Sana, explains the technology for treating the water is “not rocket science". Solar panels power a pump which draws groundwater and saves it in overhead tanks. Once sediments like mud settle, this water is passed through a small treatment plant that uses a combination of membrane filters and reverse osmosis to remove contaminants such as excess salt, fluorides and even E. coli bacteria, which has been linked with ailments like diarrhoea, urinary tract infections and respiratory illnesses. The water is again stored in tanks, where a UV lamp is fitted to ensure it stays clean and ready for use.
While Gajapati Raju’s team designed it so the grey water from the treatment plant at RPVV was routed back to the tanks to be run through the treatment plant a second time, she figured there had to be a better way to use it. She felt this even more acutely when she started vetting possible project sites in rural areas. Of the 130 million households in India that do not have a toilet, 116 million are in the villages, according to the 2011 Census of India report. Faecal matter often finds its way back into the water source here, leading again to problems like diarrhoea among children. “Water and sanitation go hand-in-hand. You can’t separate the two," says Gajapati Raju.
So the pragmatic solution was to also build toilet complexes at the water treatment sites. Pragmatism also commanded that Gajapati Raju resist a “one size fits all" approach. This was a lesson she learnt while considering projects from her hometown in Visakhapatnam. A coastal area, it wasn’t best-suited to implement the low-cost pit-system loo where a hole is dug in the ground to serve as a toilet and then covered up for a few years till the waste decomposes. “So close to the sea, the water would rush into the pits. It would be all slushy and smelly," says Gajapati Raju.
Sana started looking around for a more practicable solution, and the bio-toilets developed by DRDO seemed the “best option at that price".
There were other knotty problems, like figuring out the main water contaminants in the various villages where Gajapati Raju wanted to set up projects. This information is used to tweak the treatment so it is most effective against the identified problems. Here, she took the help of the district administrators. “It’s easier to work with government than people make it out to be," says Gajapati Raju. Whereas brackishness was the main problem in the east Delhi school, the water in Boduvalasa village, Andhra Pradesh, contained an excess of fluoride, which was causing “knock knees" or soft bones in many of its inhabitants.
The next challenge was to bring the people on board, to make sure they would maintain and use the facilities. Gajapati Raju enlisted the help of panchayats, especially those helmed by women sarpanches. The facilities are developed on panchayat land, always in the scheduled caste section of the village. Caste lines can be deeply divisive in the villages, and Gajapati Raju says she wanted to avoid a situation where the toilets would be kept under lock and key for use by the upper castes only.
Another difficult choice presented itself in the form of private versus community toilets. “In an ideal world, everyone should have a toilet in their home," says Gajapati Raju. But in her research, she says, she had seen places where non-profits had built pucca toilets in kuccha homes. “The residents were using these spaces as kitchens or for storing grains."
The community toilets option also afforded the chance to make sure the facility stayed clean and was regularly used.
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