By Brij Khandelwal, IANS
Agra : Residents and tourism officials are demanding clean toilets in the city of the Taj Mahal.
A conference organised by the Braj Mandal Heritage Conservation Society Sunday – the eve of World Toilet Day Monday – urged government agencies to address the problem of ill equipped, dirty and choked public toilets in the city and unleash a campaign against people defecating in the open.
A resolution adopted at the conference demanded properly maintained public toilets in all commercial complexes and markets.
“Women particularly are put to a lot of inconvenience because men can urinate just anywhere, but women suffer a lot and often develop health problems,” said Jitendra Raghvanshi, vice president of the Indian People’s Theatre Association.
Tourism industry leaders said civic agencies should build public toilets of high standards at all historical monuments.
“Some monuments do have toilets but they are inside the complexes. The people who wait endlessly for entrance tickets at the Taj or Agra Fort, including bus drivers, transporters besides hundreds of other hangers on, have no toilets.
“The sight of people using the pavements as toilets is not very pleasing, apart from creating stink and noxious gases,” said exporter Abhinav Jain.
Hotelier Sandeep Arora said: “The whole city stinks. Once upon a time, during the Mughal rule, Agra was described as lush green, fragrant, bigger than London and Paris. Today it has degenerated into a civilisation sink.”
Members of the Yamuna Bachao Samiti, an NGO working for the conservation of the Yamuna, expressed concern over the poor maintenance of public toilets.
“Without water and regular cleanliness efforts, people had no choice but to look for alternatives,” a NGO worker said.
Surendra Sharma, founder president of Agra’s Hotel and Restaurant Association, highlighted the need for upgrading and streamlining public lavatories at least around historical monuments.
Everyone in Agra is subjected to an overpowering stink due to defecation in the open. Community toilets built by the Agra Municipal Corporation or the Sulabh Shauchalayas in the slum clusters have not proved popular.
The Agra Nagar Nigam has been undertaking a project to convert all dry latrines into flush toilets, for which Rs.2,000 is paid to each family. But the problem has only got worse.
“Where’s the water for flushing the toilets?” asked Shravan Kumar, a resident of Kanghi Gali in Agra’s Gokulpura locality. “When there’s no water to drink or cook meals, how will people clean toilets on second or third floors?”
What of the public toilets?
“They are not usable. Most are never cleaned and therefore choked to capacity with waste overflowing in all directions. People normally prefer to use the boundary walls or the trees,” said environmental engineer R.K. Gupta.
Social activist and gynaecologist Shivani Chaturvedi lamented the lack of public toilet facilities.
“Bad toilet habits and unclean toilets breed many common ailments. Times have changed. From predominantly rural, we are now becoming an urban society. People should prepare themselves to change their mindsets,” she said.
No wonder then that the World Toilet Day went totally unnoticed in Agra as people continued to defecate by the roadside, in the parks, in the river Yamuna, and along the boundary walls of monuments in full public glare.