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| Religion Forum Index » Hinduism Forum » PROGRESS In Backward INDIA! WOMEN Demand TOILETS To... |
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| Suppurating Tool... |
 Posted: Mon Oct 12, 2009 2:23 am |
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"Indian girls are traditionally seen as a financial liability because
of the wedding dowries -- often a life's savings -- their fathers
often shell out to the groom's family. But that is slowly changing as
women marry later and grow more financially self-reliant."
"No Toilet, No Bride" campaign is moving females out from under mens'
dominion.
"With economic freedom, women are increasingly expecting more, and
toilets are at the top of their list."
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"In India, New Seat of Power for Women"
"Prospective Brides Demand Sought-After Commodity: A Toilet"
By Emily Wax
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, October 12, 2009
NILOKHERI, India -- An ideal groom in this dusty farming village is a
vegetarian, does not drink, has good prospects for a stable job and
promises his bride-to-be an amenity in high demand: a toilet.
In rural India, many young women are refusing to marry unless the
suitor furnishes their future home with a bathroom, freeing them from
the inconvenience and embarrassment of using community toilets or
squatting in fields.
About 665 million people in India -- about half the population -- lack
access to latrines. But since a "No Toilet, No Bride" campaign started
about two years ago, 1.4 million toilets have been built here in the
northern state of Haryana, some with government funds, according to
the state's health department.
Women's rights activists call the program a revolution as it spreads
across India's vast and largely impoverished rural areas.
"I won't let my daughter near a boy who doesn't have a latrine," said
Usha Pagdi, who made sure that daughter Vimlas Sasva, 18, finished
high school and took courses in electronics at a technical school.
"No loo? No 'I do,' " Vimlas said, laughing as she repeated a radio
jingle.
"My father never even allowed me an education," Pagdi said, stroking
her daughter's hair in their half-built shelter near a lagoon strewn
with trash. "Every time I washed the floors, I thought about how I
knew nothing. Now, young women have power. The men can't refuse us."
Indian girls are traditionally seen as a financial liability because
of the wedding dowries -- often a life's savings -- their fathers
often shell out to the groom's family. But that is slowly changing as
women marry later and grow more financially self-reliant. More rural
girls are enrolled in school than ever before.
A societal preference for boys here has become an unlikely source of
power for Indian women. The abortion of female fetuses in favor of
sons -- an illegal but widespread practice -- means there are more
eligible bachelors than potential brides, allowing women and their
parents to be more selective when arranging a match.
"I will have to work hard to afford a toilet. We won't get any bride
if we don't have one now," said Harpal Sirshwa, 22, who is hoping to
marry soon. Neem tree branches hung in the doorway of his parents'
home, a sign of pride for a family with sons. "I won't be offended
when the woman I like asks for a toilet."
Satellite television and the Internet are spreading images of rising
prosperity and urban middle-class accouterments to rural areas, such
as spacious apartments -- with bathrooms -- and women in silk saris
rushing off to the office.
India's rapid urbanization has also contributed to rising aspirations
in small towns and villages. On a crowded highway that runs into this
village, about 170 miles north of New Delhi, young women, once seen
clinging to the backs of motorbikes driven by their fathers or
husbands, now drive their own scooters. One recent popular TV ad shows
a rural girl sheepishly entering a scooter showroom, then beaming as
she whizzes through the parking lot on her new moped.
With economic freedom, women are increasingly expecting more, and
toilets are at the top of their list, they say.
The lack of sanitation is not only an inconvenience but also
contributes to the spread of diseases such as diarrhea, typhoid and
malaria.
"Women suffer the most since there are prying eyes everywhere," said
Ashok Gera, a doctor who works in a one-room clinic here. "It's
humiliating, harrowing and extremely unhealthy. I see so many young
women who have prolonged urinary tract infections and kidney and liver
problems because they don't have a safe place to go."
Previous attempts to bring toilets to poor Indian villages have mostly
failed. A 2001 project sponsored by the World Bank never took off
because many people used the latrines as storage facilities or took
them apart to build lean-tos, said Ranjana Kumari, director of the
Center for Social Research in New Delhi, who worked on the program.
But by linking toilets to courtship, "No Toilet, No Bride" has been
the most successful effort so far. Walls in many villages are painted
with slogans in Hindi, such as "I won't get my daughter married into a
household which does not have a toilet." Even popular soap operas have
featured dramatic plots involving the campaign.
"The 'No Toilet, No Bride' program is a bloodless coup," said
Bindeshwar Pathak, founder of Sulabh International, a social
organization, and winner of this year's Stockholm Water Prize for
developing inexpensive, eco-friendly toilets. "When I started, it was
a cultural taboo to even talk about toilets. Now it's changing. My
mother used to wake up at 4 a.m. to find someplace to go quietly. My
wife wakes up at 7 a.m., and can go safely in her home."
Pathak runs a school and job-training center for women who once
cleaned up human waste by hand. They are known as untouchables, the
lowest caste in India's social order. As more toilets come to India,
the women are less likely to have to do such jobs, Pathak said.
"I want so much for them to have skills and dignity," Pathak said. "I
tell the government all the time: If India wants to be a superpower,
first we need toilets. Maybe it will be our women who finally change
that."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/11/AR2009101101934.html?hpid=topnews |
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