Road to prosperity lies in toilet training.

Open air defecation is the worst problem India suffers from. 

Most of the people in India cannot afford to have toilets at home. As most of them are uneducated and live in villages or slums. Government is encouraging to build toilets at home and is refunding money for construction of toilets at their residence.

What are people doing with this policy?

They are taking photos of somebody else’s toilet and getting the refund.

Why are our people like this? Why do they not want to improve their status? They do not think, what they are doing is bad after all. They are happy, open-air toilet is better for them. There are many reasons why they do this.

First is that they have been doing this for years, there is nothing wrong in continuing, since nobody is forcing them, not to do it.

Second many of the toilets what they have seen, if ever they have seen, are ill ventilated and smell is different for the one who is used to open air defecation, where there is fresh air.

Other thing is, everybody is doing it and there is no feeling of guilt or shame. It is common and natural.

So we have millions of them defecating openly all over the country and soiling every water source. This is a serious issue we have to address immediately.

In my view any development we do, we have to start from the grass root level. We have to invest in our villages. We have to teach them, we have to be strict and implement the projects and at the same time we have to take action against ones who do not follow.

This has to be taken as a national priority and should be tackled at the national level with a blanket rule.

All the institutions of the nation have to be roped in, private and public, which include schools, colleges, industries and volunteers. There should be a time frame of six months to one year, just to teach and train. Teaching them to use toilet saying that they have to use toilets because it does not look good to others is not the way to do it.

The toilet by itself has to be explained, in terms of hygiene, how it functions, how to flush properly, how not to waste water, how to keep it clean. You have to get to basics including how to seat themselves on western toilet either for urinating or defecating. There is little bit of science involved here.

Many women do not use western toilets for urinating for some silly reason. The reason is, they do not know how to seat themselves. For example: they have to seat little front for urinating and little back for defecating. And men should lift toilet seats for urinating in western style or still better to seat themselves to urinate.

Then only can you expect them to get used that.

Government is already financing building of toilets. But this has to be taken very seriously and private sector has to be roped in. I would say this has to be done aggressively like pulse polio program.

Just because many have toilets at home does not mean they know how to use them. There are many who are highly educated, having no idea how to use them. This you can see in any five star hotel when conferences are conducted.

Another thing we have to do is build toilets across the nation. This can be given to private sector in public lands (mostly in towns and cities). They can charge for services.

We should have an authority something like ISO for toilets. All these toilets should adhere to the guidelines of that authority how to keep it clean and charge.

Until we learn this toilet business, we cannot go very far in this world. I personally feel, this is the first thing any human should know before he can call himself developed.

Toilet trained is half way ahead. A person's attitude can change when he is toilet trained. Just imagine the hygiene standard of the country after this with no open air defecation. 

PS: All the pictures are copied from Google search for illustration purposes only.