The team of Transparent Chennai sits in a comfortable air-conditioned office with a beautiful cafeteria, serene environment, excellent infrastructure with ergonomic chairs and clean, hygienic toilets. The last one on the list, i.e. washrooms, is something that can easily escape our attention. Many times I hear my colleagues say – “What an awesome cafeteria!”and “What a comfortable chair!”, but never heard anybody say that they are glad to have washrooms in this office. I suppose this is because most of us presume such basic needs and services to be in place. But what about other residents of Chennai, especially the less privileged ones – workers in the informal sector, residents living in slums, employees at workplaces without any access to sanitation? This is where public toilets come to the rescue of these not so privileged classes. Has the government succeeded in fulfilling these basic needs of its people? This is the question that daunted our team for a long time, and very soon enough became a new project, a new idea, a new reason for the team to get busy – ‘Access to Sanitation for Chennai Residents’

A few times when our office toilets are locked up temporarily for maintenance, everyone looks extremely worried and distracted. Now just imagine the plight of those workers, especially women workers, who are constantly worried about such things! How can they concentrate on their work or for that matter lead a hygienic and healthy life if adequate sanitation facilities are not provided to them? Transparent Chennai decided to find out how these people feel about this aspect of their lives.

1. Behind the scenes: Somya, Sam, Vaishnavi and Muthu.

The first step towards figuring out an answer is to have data to look at. One of our brightest interns went about the city collecting data on public toilets built by the Corporation of Chennai, and other private toilets, if any. Chennai city is divided into 10 Zones and the data told us that the number of toilets at present stands at 572. With each zone having a population of around 4lakhs, this number is quite disturbing. Further, while some zones have as many as 100 toilets, some barely have 20! This is all the more shocking. Never mind, we thought. Let’s go and talk to these people first. We chose Zone 4 from the list having the least number of toilets – 20 for our interaction.

Owner of a toilet poses for a snap

While the results of the survey/interviews will be disclosed later, I would really like to talk about our experience. First, the list given to us by the Corporation is far from being comprehensive. With only the street names with us, it was extremely difficult to locate these on the maps and Sam, I and Muthu had to sit with it for hours to figure it out on the map. Second, there were some street names which were at multiple locations on the map, making our search all the more difficult. But this was only the beginning. Once located on the map, the same had to be discovered in the field. Third, some of the streets did not even have a mention on any of the maps we referred to. So, we just went blindly to Zone 4 and began our search. I remember a certain Jagannathan street which we searched for almost an hour on the field. We kept going round and round the same roads and finally found this mysteriously hidden street to our relief. I am sure if asked to go back, none of us would have a clue about it. Probably the GPS points that we noted down at each location would come to our rescue.

Finally, the questionnaires had to be revised multiple times to suit our needs after taking into account the observations made on our first field visit. All in all, it was a really enriching yet tiring experience. The Chennai heat was gruesome and the rains only made the visits worse, with water clogging, traffic jams and blocked sewers. However, the people we interviewed were extremely friendly and welcoming and many offered to serve us tea and coffee in spite of their poor economic status. Children were really enthusiastic and grinned and laughed, probably more than I used to when I was a child. The people and their lives touched our hearts and made the entire experience warm and memorable. One thing which was pretty much obvious from the time we commenced this study is that, it is extremely difficult in this city to get any information, be it some basic information on public toilets.

Posted by Somya Sethuraman