Perspectives: The Field
A speculative piece on the day-to-day reality on the front lines of the Indian sanitation crisis — based on first-hand experience
It’s so early in the morning that the breaking of dawn is still hours away. You rise though in order to join other ladies heading off to the field-cum-toilet that your slum avails for answering nature’s call. Doing so alone is simply too unsafe to consider; you’ve managed to avoid assault, but harassment from local men and boys, even your own relatives, has become an unfortunate fact of life.
Your slum lacks any sort of provisioning of water from your city, but thankfully you and some neighbors have managed to scrimp and save over the past year to afford constructing a well. It cost you nearly US$200; a king’s ransom representing more than a month’s earnings for your husband, when he is able to find work. You quickly gather water from the well and carry it with you in a recycled liter bottle that once held Sprite but now holds the saving grace for your morning’s post-defecation ablutions.
(Photo credit: Enrico Fabian)
Your basic mobile phone provides enough light to let you navigate the labyrinthine lanes of your slum, and to avoid the ubiquitous pitfalls along the way: broken glass and other trash, ditches filled with stagnant water festering with God only knows what germs, rodents and other creatures darting in and out of every dark corner, and the waste discharged by the slum’s other 10,000+ residents this morning and every one preceding it the past 10 years you’ve lived here.
The previous slum you lived in had gender-segregated fields for relieving oneself, but space in this one is at too high a premium for such a luxury. Community leaders had arranged for men and women to use the field at different times to afford some privacy, but neither nature nor man can adhere to such timelines. As such, you’re never too sure who you will encounter, and how they will treat you.
Thankfully you are not ill, though the tainted water in your well leads to inevitable and regular bouts of gastroenteritis and diarrhea. Sometimes you’re forced to visit the field several times throughout the day, even in broad daylight, subjecting yourself to the shame and indignity of emptying your bowels in plain view of the Engineering college next door, and its leering, sneering student body.
You still have to hurry though, as the day’s water needs to be fetched, the home fires started, your family’s breakfast made, and the children readied for school. Life not only starts early, it starts fast. Your lone hope is that your husband finds work today as your food stocks are running low and taking a usurious loan to fill your belly would destroy any hopes of escaping this place.
Once your family is fed and off for the day, you’re left to tend to your own duties in relative solitude: gathering firewood, preparing lunch and dinner, fetching water, washing clothes, and cleaning the homestead chief amongst them. The latter of which is not overly time-consuming as your family of 6 lives in a single room that is less than 10-square-meters.
It fills you with immense pride to keep a clean home, and to provide whatever creature comforts you can for your children. Your husband pays a neighbor Rs. 300 per month for electricity to power your television set, a lone overhead light, and ceiling fan. That represents a day’s wages for him, but it’s worth the sacrifice to provide a little escape for the children, and yourself. Bollywood movies and cricket matches dominate the screen.
During the day, you avoid drinking water and eating meals in an attempt to avoid having to urinate or defecate. It’s a dangerous strategy that leads to dehydration and chronic urinary tract infections, but it’s still a better option than subjecting yourself to the taunts of passersby and potential sexual assaults from predators seemingly always lurking in the shadows.
There are infrequent visits from farangis (“foreigners”) representing this or that NGO promising to alleviate your sanitation woes. These, along with news reports and rumors of the government providing community or even household toilets for everyone makes you hopeful for a better tomorrow. But until that becomes a reality you have the field, and all the indignity that comes with it.
This design fiction narrative was inspired by Kevin’s experience working on a a large-scale infrastructure and research initiative to improve the user experience in India’s urban slum community sanitation ecosystem by providing facilities designed to take into consideration end-user needs and habits. To learn more about this project, please visit this case study.
