 When the people lead Experience shows how much change can be generated by a little help. In the Dharavi slum of Bombay, pavement dwellers were forced to use wretched public toilets, each of which served as many as 800 people. Working with local and international NGOs, female construction workers living in the slum were taught how to build latrines. The project had a dual benefit: They learned skills that more than doubled their income, and they got modern latrines. Construction costs were only 40 per cent of those charged by private contractors. The pavement dwellers each pay 2 to 5 rupees (less than 15 cents) per month for cleaning and maintaining the new facilities. The Bombay Municipal Corporation recently pledged to support construction of 2,000 latrine blocks, each with five latrines. The residents of Lemba, a poor neighbourhood of Kinshasa, endured huge
mounds of rotting garbage that blocked sewage canals and drew armies of
rats—until they had the idea to hold a cleanliness contest. Now they cart
the waste to a central dump where it is separated. Glass, plastic and paper
are sold; organic waste is composted, to be sold later as fertilizer. Revenue
from the operation supports community improvement efforts.
The city I know best is Karachi. Like many cities in developing countries, about 40 per cent of Karachi’s population lives in squatter communities, called katchi abadis. These are not decaying slums in the urban centre but dynamic new neighbourhoods developed on the edge of the city over the past 25 years by enterprising migrants from rural areas. For rich people living in established neighbourhoods, Karachi has modern sanitation, with flush latrines in the homes and underground sewers. But most of the poor living in the katchi abadis had only bucket latrines and open sewers. |
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Virtually every home in Orangi has a toilet connected to an underground sewage line, all paid for by the residents. |
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| In the 1970s, the municipal government made a major shift in policy:
The authorities accepted the fact that the katchi abadis were here to stay.
This was a key step, because it enabled people to buy title to their homesites,
giving them a sense of permanency and the incentive to invest in improvements.
The city dug water lines to the katchi abadis, but they still lacked sewage
service. The streets were filled with excrement and other waste. People,
especially children, paid with their health. This in turn meant that families
were spending an enormous percentage of their income on medical bills.
In 1980, we formed an organization called Orangi Pilot Project to work with one of these communities. Orangi is home to about 1 million working-class people—skilled labourers, clerks, shopkeepers—with family incomes averaging about 1,000 rupees ($30) per month. The residents had formed numerous community associations that relentlessly pressed their demands with the authorities, but they were getting nowhere. Sanitation was their most urgent need, above health care, schools and jobs. They wanted the government to install a modern sewage system. This seemed unlikely to happen. Orangi Pilot Project set about helping them to develop it on their own. Seventeen years later, virtually every home in Orangi has a pour-flush toilet connected to an underground sewage line, all paid for by the residents. Orangi Pilot Project provided technical advice and plans for a simplified design, which reduced the cost by almost a factor of 10, but the organization did not contribute one rupee for construction. Each family invested about a month’s income to buy materials and hire labour. We avoided government contractors, who often pad costs and include kickbacks for officials. The city has plans to build a treatment plant, but for now, as in the rest of Karachi, Orangi’s sewage lines empty into creeks. From an initial desire for better sanitation, these stalwart people have gone on to develop a whole series of services to improve their lives and futures. They have organized mothers' classes on disease prevention and hygiene—for which the women pay—as well as group discussions about family planning. Now, more than half of Orangi women plan the births of their children, compared to 7 per cent in other communities. The children fill the rooms of over 500 private schools. Parents are
willing to pay the extra fees for the private schools because they are
better than the government schools. There is also a revolving loan fund
for small businesses, which are thriving in every lane of Orangi. It is
a community transformed. The people have been strengthened by their role
in solving their most fundamental problem, and their pride is visible.
The Orangi experience reinforces an essential lesson: Adequate sanitation is fundamental to improving living standards. In its absence, diarrhoea and other illnesses prevail, leading to high death rates and forcing families to spend their scarce savings on medical care. No matter how hard they work, the poor are then left with little hope of accumulating the means to start up the ladder of development. But when this fundamental problem is solved, especially when the people play a leading role in solving it, they are strengthened, and the stage is set for advance. The experience teaches another lesson as well. Through their massive
collective effort, the people of Orangi pushed aside the roadblocks the
bureaucrats had erected in their path. However, the roadblocks should not
be there in the first place. It is inhuman to expect the many to endure
medieval sanitation while the few enjoy modern facilities. As government
policy— or lack of policy— it is economically suicidal. With enough pressure
from their citizens as well as the international community, governments
will learn that they cannot remain indifferent to the most fundamental
human needs.
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