TOILETS AND TEMPLES

                                               

A few days back, when Narendra Modi was asked about the temple issue of Ayodhya, very boldly he mentioned, first toilets and then temples. This spread like a wild fire and the anti-Modi groups ganged up to castigate him. Even the VHP did not take it in right spirit. Jairam Ramesh was more vitriolic. The sanitarians over the world know it better that some 40% of the world population, deprived of clean toilets will continue to suffer if the mind-set did not change. They who flay at Modi for his statement on toilet, are suffering from the biased mind-set. Even if a very famous temple has people around defecating in open , its sanctity will be compromised.

If cleanliness is next to godliness, then how one can disparage the importance of clean toilets and clean potable water. When Mahatma Gandhi said “ Toilets are temples” nobody criticized him. He had further courage to say that if there was re-birth, he would like to be born in a scavenger family so that he could do something for their well-being.  I remind today’s so called followers of Gandhi and Nehru that the latter had openly expressed that he would consider India to be on the pinnacle of civilization on the day when every Indian got access to hygienic toilets. Even though he did not mention temple, he did not consider toilts inferior.

Today in the money oriented world where everything is weighed on profit and loss basis, I would like to quote an authentic figure, emphasizing the benefits of investment in toilets. The material had appeared in the Sept 2013 issue of the Water and Sanitation Rotarian Action Group. “The World Bank recently published a great infographic about sanitation entitled ‘What’s a toilet worth?’ Did you know that the total global cost of inadequate sanitation is estimated as $260 Billion every year? These costs capture premature death, health care costs, productivity losses, and time lost finding a private place to defecate.

Globally improved sanitation has rate of return of six for each dollar invested and provides other benefits like increased tourism, sfety, land value, water quality and dignity”. Perhaps Modi is far-sighted and a cut above others.