The same news item speaks of a Kenyan journalist blaming Indian industrialists for exploiting pan-African nations. He alleged that they (the industrialists) bend rules, abuse environment and do not value labour. He was apparently referring to industrialists of Indian origin in his country and other African countries. Both these statements, by Koffi Annan and by the unnamed Kenyan scribe, came during the ongoing Global Water, Sanitation and Hygiene for All (WASH) Forum, currently underway in a city called Dakar, in distant Senegal.
The Forum retold the world the stark truth that every 15 seconds, a child dies as a result of diseases related to unsafe drinking water and inadequate sanitation. More disheartening facts were reiterated in Dakar last Monday when the Global Forum was formally inaugurated. An estimated 2.6 billion people do not have decent sanitation facilities. The UN Secretary General put forth a formula to prevent deaths caused by living in insanitary conditions and reverse the situation. We need to improve on the progress we have made to date, working simultaneously on water and sanitation, We also need to make the wider effort to alleviate the crushing poverty and ill-health suffered by so many of Indians.
The Dakar meet has highlighted certain vital issues, which are visible in our own backyards too. Look at our own Mutha River. A troop of kayakers recently went on a river-pilgrimage from Alandi to Pandharpur. The post-excursion report of the troop tells us a horrifying truth -- that not a single cubic inch of water in the Indrayani or the Bhima River is safe for man or cattle. And we are all responsible for the situation.
The UN has launched an effort to achieve its Millennium Development Goals by 2015. It has also declared the decade between year 2005 and 2015 as the International Decade for Action. And theme for the decade is “Water for Life.”
Annan stresses that cooperation at the international level to achieve the desired goals could only be achieved through working together at the local and national levels -- with communities, local authorities and national governing structures "committed and fully involved in making sure that real actions are taking place in their midst".
Sir Richard Jolly, who heads the Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council, recommends seven critical steps to ensure acceleration of action towards the goals of water, sanitation and hygiene. To begin with there is a need for all countries to put sufficient resources in their government budgets. The second crucial step is women's empowerment and the strengthening of their influence in all matters relating to water and sanitation systems. Then come catalytic commitments from aid donors, mobilization of school systems with children and youth as agents of change, search for new partnerships and coalitions, and yardsticks with clear objectives to measure success indicators with ongoing monitoring and evaluation of human impacts.
I spent the last week in Pench Tiger Reserve, the home of wolf boy Mowgli in Rudyard Kipling’s Jungle Book. The one thing that struck me about tribal Karmajhari was cleanliness. I remembered Karmajhari when I was reading comments made by Vanessa Tobin, the UNICEF director for water and sanitation, who is attending the Global Forum. She wants a real global drive to promote sanitation and good hygiene. She also underlines the need for low technology and low-cost options in the field of public hygiene.
Form our entire ritual obsession with cleanliness, we, in India, live in remarkably unsanitary conditions. Good sanitation involves a whole lot of issues. For instance, it means greater availability of hand washing facilities for people. This is a challenge especially in rural areas of developing countries, which face water shortage. According to Tobin, "Communities are universally receptive because they know (better sanitation) can only benefit their children's health, but there is resistance within the development agenda on sanitation."
This has been a vital aspect since water-borne diseases such as cholera thrive under poor sanitary conditions in urban and rural environments where people have limited access to clean water for cooking or even for washing their hands. British medical journal Lancet reports that some 40 per cent of all diarrheal illnesses, which kill an estimated 2,000 children daily, can be wiped out if sanitation, including personal hygiene, is improved. What we is need is some simple intervention. Teach people to wash their hands after using the toilet and before eating. And then teach them to wash their hands off dispassionate policy makers. After all it is a question of public health.
(Excerpted from an article first published in The Maharashtra Herald on December 2, 2004)
