While construction of toilets has received a lot of attention in India’s sanitation campaigns in recent times, another important sanitation need, that of bathrooms, has not received the same attention. This has happened despite the fact that the non-availability of adequate and properly covered bathing spaces in the homes of weaker sections results in several problems for the women of these families.

When they have no other option but to take their bath in more or less open places exposed to the view of passers-by, women cannot have a proper bath. The essential requirements of sanitation and proper hygiene cannot be met in a hurriedly completed bath in an open space. Such problems can be even more for adolescent girls or young girls. In addition problems can increase for women who are unwell. While this is a problem mainly from the perspective of hygiene, health and sanitation, there is also another aspect of the dignity and security of women. In the widely acclaimed film on slum life ‘Chakra’, a bathing scene filmed on Smita Patil brought out in stark terms the extent of indignity that can be suffered by a woman engaged in the routine act of having a bath just because she has to bathe in an open space and cannot get rid of a lout staring all the time at her despite being rebuked time and again by her.

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Keeping this in view I was not at all surprised when I found that a voluntary organization which constructed proper bathrooms for women of weaker sections in villages named them as Samman Ghar (Places of Dignity). There is also the related aspect of the security of women and saving them from harm and harassment. There is thus a strong case for a programme of construction of community bathrooms for women living in hamlets of weaker sections in particular where homes do not have proper bathing places. Such bathrooms should be built near reliable water sources, ideally supplied with tap water. The responsibility of keeping the bathroom and its surroundings clean and safe and for arranging any repairs can be given to a group or committee of women within the hamlet. This programme can be useful in rural areas as well as in urban slums.

Some lessons can be learnt from the experience of those voluntary organizations which have taken up this work on a small and limited scale in their work areas. This writer recently visited one such project area in Hussainabad block of Palamau district, Jharkhand. Here a voluntary organization, Sahbhagi Shikshan Sansthaan (SSK) has taken up a project called HRIDAY and while this has been a many-sided development project supported by LIC (HFL), one important component in all villages of the project area was to construct community bathrooms for women living in hamlets of weaker sections. I talked to many women in these hamlets regarding the usefulness of these bathrooms for them, and all of them stated that these have been very useful.

By the time we reached the Dalit hamlet of Basari village, it was already evening, an unlikely time for bathing. But the community bathroom was still in use. This has been constructed near a water source, using water lifted by a solar pump, so water can be obtained very easily. Malti Devi, who is a member of a local self-help group of women, said that this looks like a simple construction to outsiders but for them it has proved very useful. In addition, she and other women pointed out that several water sources including hand-pumps and their surroundings have been improved so that it is easier to take water from here. The surroundings are also free from waterlogging and dirt. This is a sanitation programme worth taking up on a much larger scale but in addition there is a need also to complete the half-finished work of toilet constructions taken up earlier. In many villages that I have visited recently, particularly in hamlets of the weaker sections, people complain that due to a number of reasons the toilet construction campaign did not work well in their areas. In addition the work should be taken up with the close involvement of people’s committees. (The writer is Honorary Convener, Campaign to Save Earth Now. His recent books include Man over Machine, A Day in 2071 and When the Two Streams Met.)