An international study by the Hygiene Council rated 12 countries on the basis of personal and household hygiene. The scores for handwashing and household hygiene are below:

Percentage of respondents who wash hands 5+ times daily

The research study sought to characterize the key determinants of personal and household hygiene behaviours that affect health cross-culturally; to pinpoint the key factors in different personalities and settings that determine hygiene behaviour, and highlight those that can be modified to improve health. Read more.

For the fourth Saturday in a row, Reclaim our Beaches (ROB) conducted an audit of the area around Broken Bridge, where the Adyar River meets the ocean. This time, we decided to survey the garbage in Zone 7, pictured below. Although the Zone seems rather expansive, our team of 13 located almost all of the items of trash and recorded their name and company efficiently.

The Zone, as seen above, wrapped around the dredges of the Adyar River. On the grassy area, there was an abundance of thermocol (almost all of the white in the picture). These chunks of styrofoam were scattered across the entire area.

Some of the thermacol was so embedded in the earth that there were plants and flowers sprouting from them. The eco-system had adapted to include this stretch polystyrene manufactured from petroleum, which, currently no microorganism can biodegrade, meaning that it will remain on our shores for eternity.

This particular piece was practically sprouting from the earth, and we had a bit of fun attempting to dislodge it.

There were many other fascinating discarded items along the shore, including  a perfectly intact light bulb, a hippo child’s toy, oil from the government, many toothpaste tubes, and more.

After observing everything on the grassy plains, we made our way over to the shores of the Adyar river. This zone actually contains one of the farthest parts of the river, which has become a collecting ground for much of the trash that is thrown in the Adyar river; it is filled with all types of trash (vegetables, plastic bottles, wrappers and more) and alive with insects crawling around.

Hiding in this massive pile were some remarkable items, like this helmet with barnacles growing all over it. We also liked the bag of Freedom Oil. Nearby, there was a skeleton of a spine! We speculated about what animal it could be: goat? dog?

The audit was very successful, and we discovered some very fascinating trash, from stuffed animals to real skeletons. But while examining the trash and searching for interesting items, we were also thinking about what we were actually doing and the significance of all the trash that we found. Just looking at the pile of garbage at the edge of the river, it is clear that there is a problem with littering. However, if all this trash was thrown in a dumpster would it be much better off? Is burning trash in an incinerator, releasing toxins and greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and nitrous oxide or burying it in a landfill where it would pollute our water, earth, and food and release methane better than having the trash remain on the beach? In order to reclaim our beaches, we must get to the root of the problem – why do we consume so much and why is the trash so difficult to dispose of sustainably?

Join us at Broken Bridge every Saturday at 4:30 to ponder these questions and find out what trash is hiding on the shores of the beach!

A government girls’ school in Ernakulam, Kerala, will soon be the first school in the country to get an electronic public toilet.

This is part of the suchi@school (Sustainable Comprehensive Hygiene Initiative) project, an initiative of local CPI (M) Member of Parliament comrade P. Rajeev. The project aims to ensure adequate sanitation facilities – toilets and urinals – in all government and government-aided schools in Ernakulam district.

A number of schools will be fitted with e-toilets, which have automatic doors and will self-clean after each use. Where water is scarce, recycling units using biomembrane reactors will be installed.

Read more….

Last month, the New York Times published an op-ed piece entitled ‘Hands off our houses’[i] by Matias Echanove and Rahul Srivatsava of the Institute of Urbanology, in which they confronted and challenged the immensely popular idea of the $300 House-for-the-Poor[ii]. My goal is to use some of their arguments to highlight the dilemmas involved in the relocation and resettlement of slum dwellers in Chennai.

This concept of the $300 House was propounded by Vijay Govindarajan of Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business and Christian Sarkar, a marketing expert. The idea behind the $300 house was to replace the shacks that most slum dwellers currently live in (usually self-built with easily available materials like clay, mud or cardboard and hence, easily prone to collapse; poorly designed with no ventilation and sanitation; and lacking in basic infrastructure like lighting, furniture and drinking water facilities) with a safer, more durable and affordable alternative ( a house built out of mass produced materials designed to withstand climatic variations, equipped with the facilities needed for a civilised life – water and lighting facilities) – the $300 House. So the $300 house would be a single-room structure fitted with solar panels on the roofs, sleeping hammocks, fold-down chairs, a tablet computer and a water filter. These cheap homes would be built somewhere along the outskirts of a city, through collaborations between design and engineering companies, non-profits and even governments and would be offered to the slum dweller at the price of $300. In their New York Times article, Echanove and Srivatsava claim that their work in Dharavi, Mumbai has shown that the reality is more complex than conceived by Govindarajan and Sarkar. “Replacing individual, incrementally built houses with a ready-made solution would do more harm than good.… It would destroy businesses and communities”

My work with Transparent Chennai has entailed visits to Kannagi Nagar, a colony constructed by the Tamil Nadu Slum Clearance Board to house relocated and resettled people from the slums in the Chennai Corporation Area. Transparent Chennai, in partnership with MIDS is undertaking a survey in order to explore the question of how relocation affects the livelihoods of the poor. My visits to this resettlement colony have confirmed Srivatsava’s and Echanove’s claim – that the creators of the $300 house were  wrong in assuming that a safer, more durable structure would be better than the self-built shacks of the slum dwellers. Relocating 15,000 families to Kannagi Nagar without considering their own needs and aspirations has proven to be quite disastrous, even if their current dwelling is a four-walled concrete structure, which to outsiders, may seem like a major improvement to their mud shacks.

And why is this so? As Echanove and Srivatsava point out in their article, and as is usually the case in most slums, slum dwellers design their homes according to personal needs and necessities. For instance, some homes double up as a shop or even a manufacturing unit. In a ‘one-size fits all’ apartment in Kannagi Nagar, such adaptation is inconceivable. One of the residents I spoke to sells home-cooked food for a living. The tiny kitchen space in her apartment has made it harder for her to prepare food on a mass scale. And there is absolutely no scope for expanding the kitchen in the apartment. Also, in the slums, households which follow the joint-family system or families which live together out of financial difficulties, may, with time and increases in income levels, expand or upgrade their shacks or may even create more partitions to accommodate all the members of the household. This again is impossible in a multi-storeyed apartment building. The result – a family of five or a family with grown children is forced to cram into the 162 sq.ft.one-room apartment. The provision of basic facilities like the toilet inside the house has also turned into a nightmare.

Water supply to Kannagi nagar is irregular and on some days, residents go for 5 whole days with no supply. On such days, there is no water available to flush the toilets and uncleaned toilets in a one-room structure can make life miserable. In their previous abodes, residents used the public toilets, but with the current system of a toilet inside the house, the government is no longer obliged to construct public toilets in Kannagi Nagar.  Dislocation has also resulted in a loss of livelihood. Most of the residents in Kannagi Nagar had secure jobs in neighbourhoods around their slum before the relocation and had to give those jobs up with the change in residence. Those who were fortunate enough to retain their previous jobs now have to commute the long distances to their previous workplace and this has turned out to be a huge financial burden. The location of the tenements in Thuraipakam which is 1-2 hours from the centre of the city has only added to their woes. This loss of livelihood and income insecurity has led to a severe rise in the number of suicides in Kannagi Nagar.[iii]

Clearly, the trade-off is significant. It’s a trade-off between livelihood and a safe shelter/more hygienic surroundings/better infrastructure facilities. Who decides the value of the trade-off? And what is a solution to this dilemma? Echanove and Srivatsava suggest a way out of this – the focus should be on improving existing dwellings in low-income neighbourhoods by offering residents architectural and engineering advice and durable materials at more affordable prices, they say. Giving slum dwellers ownership rights over the land they occupy would be the first step towards solving this issue. So should be the Tamil Nadu Slum Clearance Board (TNSCB) then be transformed into the Tamil Nadu Slum Upgradation Board?

Today’s Hindu has two very interesting stories that I felt were worth sharing with our readers. You might have already seen and read it but I am not sure if you had an afterthought. I obviously had one, so penning it down for all of you to read. The second and third page of Hindu which tell you stories about our very own Chennai City have two very contrasting pieces of news today: naturally, one good and the other bad.

Let’s first talk about the good news. Apparently, Metrowater, in an effort to ensure equitable distribution, has increased water supply to north Chennai, which is considered to be (a lot more) poorer than south Chennai. This increase is said to benefit the so called “orphaned” areas of north Chennai including Sowcarpet, Pulianthope and Basin Bridge. The report says that though the quantum of water supply was almost the same in some zones, population density led to unequal distribution. Makes sense. But isn’t it surprising to know that Metrowater, a parastatal agency which is responsible for supplying water to the entire city required a special survey to highlight such disparities? Worse, residents feel that this increase in supply will not bring any major relief to them because their areas often receive contaminated water. Will we now need another survey of quality of water in these areas to make effective and timely policy decisions? Anyhow, I would still consider this announcement as positive and much needed: better late than never is what they say.

Scene: Residents of Ayanavaram, North Chennai, washing clothes in a common area outside Corporation toilet

What’s the bad news? Chennai District, which has always had one of the the lowest school dropout rates when compared with other districts in TN as well as districts in all other states, has reported 3283 children in the age group of 5-16 years to have dropped out of school. According to a recent study done by Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan:
- Male children constitute a major chunk of this number – now this is contrary to common belief that drop out rates are higher for girls than boys
- Majority pointed to lack of interest in going to school as reason for dropping out. Other reasons were child labor, lack of guidance, poverty, natural calamity etc.
- Majority drop outs are from backward classes and communities
- Again, north Chennai had relatively higher concentration of these dropouts.

Do we need to revamp our education system? Shouldn’t policies and programmes be inclusive and pro poor? How is it that north Chennai’s residents have to bear the brunt of it all – be it education or basic human needs and necessities like food, water, shelter and sanitation? We do keep writing and talking about it, but when will the issue escalate to an extent where it translates to some meaningful action? Probably more announcements in the near future like the one Metrowater has made today, along with effective implementation of these will bring some quick relief to deprived areas.

- Somya Sethuraman

A recent article on the Hindu announced that the Chennai Rivers Restoration Trust has been ordered to devise a plan for the removal of construction debris from the Cooum River. The Cooum has undergone several such clean-ups and restoration projects over the past four decades. In 2009, Deputy Chief Minister announced an ambitious Cooum restoration project, costing over 200 Crores.  Yet another massive river cleaning initiative was announced in September for 2010 to clean over 800 tonnes of solid waste from the river. Despite all the money spent and plans devised, the Cooum continues to be more polluted than a treated sewer. So where does all the money that is budgeted for these projects go? Is the Corporation doing an efficient job of cleaning the city’s water bodies?

Members of Exnora and environmentalists comment that many of these Cooum restoration projects are counter-productive, as they do not address the source of the problems ailing the river and its associated water bodies. Many believe the major contributing factor to Cooum’s pollution is the slums that are situated on its banks. Much of the focus on restoration revolves around clearing slums and beautifying the banks of the river. However, Exnora’s research shows that a mere 0.14% of the water pollution is caused due to these slums, while the major contributing factor to Cooum’s pollution are the sewage pumping stations and treatment plants that dump gallons of sewage into the river every day. The pollution Chennai’s waterways will worsen unless the government takes the initiative to improve sewer collection and treatment.

Transparent Chennai welcomes this guest post from Mr. Bakthavatsalam Narasimhan. We hope that more regular readers of the Chennai Kaleidoscope will also contribute!