As Indians who reside in India, we know that our country is a kaleidoscope of many peoples, cultures, mindsets, and identities. We occupy the same cities, but come from different worlds. Some of us are highly educated, some aren’t. Some of us come from generational wealth, many of us have had to bootstrap our legacies. We work for others, we run our own businesses, we stay at home and care for the young and old, we invent technologies, we make business decisions that affect our employees, we work for good bosses and bad ones, we run for local office, we drive taxis, we clean toilets.
We are a melting pot. So it is easy for us to sometimes overlook the challenges that people around us face. Let’s take sanitation as an example: many of us grew up in apartments with personal toilets, while for many of us, a communal toilet was all that was available. Many of us grew up knowing the importance of handwashing, while many of us lost loved ones to preventable diarrhoeal diseases that came from unwashed hands. The gap is a large one.
Fortunately, the Swachh Bharat Mission did much to remedy that. Today, every Indian has access to a toilet, but not every Indian knows how to use one properly. As the Sub-Group of Chief Ministers on Swachh Bharat Mission found, building toilets is just half the battle; behavioural change is the rest.
Behavioural change isn’t easy, especially when it involves communication around a subject as sensitive as toilet hygiene. While the Swachh Bharat Mission made great strides in communicating the need to use toilets and their impact on the health of the population, pockets remain. This is the unsung work that falls to our sanitation workers, particularly, to women sanitation workers.
The Right Message, At The Right Time
Sanitation workers are the frontline in this fight. These are the people who clean our toilets, and therefore, are the first to know when one of the users doesn’t understand the basics. Even in our communal toilets in the city, we’ve all come across toilets that have become unusable because someone didn’t flush, or flushed something that wasn’t meant to be, or otherwise made a mess.
When toilet attendants are present, they are able to handle the situation as it happens. Toilet attendants often undergo soft skills training and are able to communicate the tenets of good toilet hygiene with respect and empathy, turning a potentially embarrassing episode into a learning opportunity.
Cultural Sensitivity and Gender
India doesn’t just live in the cities. In our rural areas, many families are new to toilet usage. These are new habits, and mistakes happen. When they do, corrections need to be made with respect and empathy. Here too, trained sanitation workers make a monumental difference to toilet adoption. A person who is embarrassed because of what happened, or otherwise daunted by an unfamiliar toilet, might want to go back to their old ways, endangering the health and safety of an entire community.
Trained sanitation workers are able to close these gaps by doing remedial communication, helping users adopt new habits. Women sanitation workers play a crucial role here, as in many of our villages, women are hesitant to speak to men about toilet and menstrual hygiene. These topics are still considered too taboo for polite conversation amongst women themselves, let alone a male social worker or sanitation worker. They are, however, much more receptive when it’s a woman sanitation worker.
Moreover, as these sanitation workers often hail from the same communities they serve, they have an intrinsic understanding of the taboos and hesitations and knowledge gaps these women have to overcome. They are able to communicate in ways that get the message across, while keeping the communication well within the bounds of propriety.
It may seem like a small thing, but by communicating in this manner, these sanitation workers are able to talk to children and grandmothers alike – opening up space for questions that they otherwise wouldn’t be able to ask anyone else. In this way, we can draw a direct line between the improved health of these communities, and the work these sanitation workers do.
Empowering the Messenger
If you’re wondering where these trained and empathetic toilet attendants and sanitation workers come from, we have many social organisations to thank, as well as Harpic. As India’s leading brand in the lavatory care segment, Harpic has a very nuanced understanding of the needs and challenges of sanitation workers, particularly women. It also understands the sanitation landscape very well, and the challenges that lie in the path of India becoming a Swachh Bharat.
Harpic leveraged this understanding into the creation of the Harpic World Toilet College (HWTC) in 2016. HWTC was established with the stated objective of improving the quality of life of sanitation workers through their rehabilitation by linking them with dignified livelihood options. Workers trained by the college are provided placement with various organisations. Following the successful proof of concept in Rishikesh, HWTCs have opened in Maharashtra, Aurangabad, in partnership with Harpic, Jagran Pehel and Maharashtra Government.
Beyond a strong focus on the technical aspects of sanitation, HWTC lays strong emphasis on soft skills, and personal development. By the time women sanitation workers graduate from HWTC, they understand the important role they play in keeping their communities healthy. They learn to see their work as essential work, and have the confidence to ask for fair compensation and protective gear for themselves, and to advocate for the needs of the community.
Their deep sense of responsibility towards the health of their communities makes communicating toilet hygiene a point of pride amongst them. They know that they are doing the work towards moving India towards a Swachh Bharat, one difficult conversation at a time.
Of course, that’s not all Harpic is doing.
For 3 years now, Harpic has partnered with News18 to create Mission Swachhta aur Paani, a movement that champions the cause of inclusive sanitation, equality for all genders, abilities, castes and classes and the strong belief that clean toilets are a shared responsibility. Mission Swachhta aur Paani brings together the right stakeholders on a common platform, so that issues of importance can be discussed, and solutions found.
If we want to live in a Swasth Bharat, we all need to do our part. Join us here, to be the change you want to see.
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