Floods often bring poisonous snakes along with the waters of Nepal’s hilly rivers – and parts of North Bihar experience up to 60 flash floods a year. A new women-led initiative is making these threats a thing of the past.
Chhathi Devi is the first woman to undertake construction of a Phaydemand Shauchalaya in Naya Tola village. Credit: Watervagabond
Nidhi Jamwal is an independent journalist based in Mumbai.
Paschim Champaran, Bihar: Puneeta Devi, a resident of Kairi village in Gaunaha block of Pashchim Champaran, is in her early thirties and has braved many floods. Her village, located near the India-Nepal border in north Bihar, faces recurring flash floods every year.
Devi has predictably lost count of these natural occurrences. However, there is something distinct she remembers about the floods that marooned several districts of Bihar in August.
“This year when our village got flooded, it was the first time my 12-year-old daughter and I defecated in a toilet during the flood. Every other flood in the past, we had to walk up to a kilometre to find a safe place to squat and relieve ourselves,” Devi said, occasionally exchanging shy smiles with her young daughter, Reema Kumari, who giggled as her mother shared their experiences of maidan jana (a local term for defecation).
Defecating in the open during floods is a nightmarish experience. Floods often bring poisonous snakes along with the waters of the hilly rivers from Nepal, according to Devi. “Now that we have a Phaydemand Shauchalaya, men cannot watch us defecate. I no more feel any shame in doing what all human beings do daily,” Kumari said.
Devi invested Rs 17,410 to build her own Phaydemand Shauchalaya (or ‘beneficial toilet’). She has expected to receive Rs 12,000 from the government in subsidies. “I am convinced that Phaydemand Shauchalaya is good for me and my family, hence I did not think twice before investing my money in it,” she said. Apart from her, seven more households in Kairi village constructed Phaydemand Shauchalayas in July this year.
One of them is 80-year-old Aasiya Devi, who spent Rs 19,065 to build her Phaydemand Shauchalaya. “I have weak knees and cannot walk properly, but had to walk long distances to defecate every morning. During the floods, my condition was pitiable. Sometimes I felt I would defecate in my saree,” she said. “But now, with the Phaydemand Shauchalaya, the quality of my life has improved. I only have to walk a few steps to reach the toilet.”
The toilet is so popular that her married granddaughter, Pratima Devi, visits her house every morning to use it.
A number of rural women in other villages of Pashchim Champaran are also adopting Phaydemand Shauchalayas. It is a unique flood-resilient ecological sanitation (ecosan) toilet. It is accessible during floods as well as generates humanure – manure from human excreta – and urine that can be used in farming.
The Phaydemand Shauchalaya has also been linked to a reduction in the risk of groundwater contamination. Groundwater is the primary source of drinking water in rural Bihar.
Meet the Phaydemand Shauchalaya
More than 66% of the people of Bihar have no access to safe sanitation. Credit: Preeti Singh
Bihar has the lowest coverage of individual household toilets in the country. Only 33.16% of its population has an individual household latrine (IHHL). The rest, more than two-thirds of the state’s population, has no access to safe sanitation. The district of Pashchim Champaran, where Phaydemand Shauchalayas are slowly becoming popular, has an IHHL coverage of 30.39% only.
Apart from low sanitation coverage, Bihar is also troubled by recurring floods. More than 73% its 94,163-sq.-km area is flood-prone. The problem is particularly acute in north Bihar, where the lives of almost 76% the population – about 50 million people – are adversely impacted by the floods.
These issues are aggravated when one considers the shallow groundwater table in the area: about 2-5 metres below ground.
“Shallow groundwater table and frequent floods means high risk of groundwater contamination due to the excreta stored in the underground soak-pits of conventional toilets, which often leak,” Eklavya Prasad, a managing trustee of the Megh Pyne Abhiyan (MPA), a non-profit working on water and sanitation issues in north Bihar, told Scroll. “During floods, water enters the pit and chokes the system.” The MPA is instrumental in fine-tuning ecosan toilets and popularising the Phaydemand Shauchalaya in north Bihar.
“Before constructing a Phaydemand Shauchalaya, we educate the community about ecological sanitation, which goes beyond just building toilets. We also conduct village-level studies to mark floodwater levels [in] the last year 10 years to ensure the pan [in a] Phaydemand Shauchalaya always remains above the floodwater,” Prasad explained.
A Phaydemand Shauchalaya promotes ecological sanitation by treating excreta as a valuable and manageable resource (it contains nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium), protects and conserves water, and sanitises faecal material.
According to an MPA document, every Phaydemand Shauchalaya has two specially-designed ecosan toilet pans. Under each pan is a concrete chamber that is kept above ground, on a raised platform, so the toilet’s working is not disrupted during floods. Each pan has a 10-inch-wide hole opening into the chamber. This is where the faeces is collected. Two basins slope away from the chamber: urine collects in the one at the front; cleaning water, in the one at the back.
After defecating, one only needs to sprinkle a handful of ash mixed with neem leaves (wherever possible) on the faeces and close the lid. Keeping wash water or urine away from the faeces prevents bacterial growth and, thus, bad odour.
A family uses one chamber for five or six months. Once it is filled, it is sealed and the faeces allowed to decompose into manure in four to five months. In this time, the family switches to using the second chamber.
Once the ‘humanure’ is ready, it is collected by family members and used in the fields. The urine is collected in a separate container, mixed with water and sprinkled in the fields as well.
Vinita Kumari, a 26-year-old resident of Poorvi Tola in the Gaunaha block of Pashchim Champaran, has been using a Phaydemand Shauchalaya since early 2013.
“Within the first two years of using a Phaydemand Shauchalaya, I harvested 10 quintals of humanure and over 72 gallons of urine, and used it all in my agricultural fields to grow sugarcane, wheat, rice, corn, etc.,” she said. “My family has stopped buying chemical fertilisers and saves up to Rs 12,000 a year.” Vinita works with a local non-profit, Water Action. Her village – Poorvi Tola – has 30 such toilets. The neighbouring hamlet has three.
A women-led effort