POVERTY: Afghanistan's water crisis

KABUL, 6 July 2011 (IRIN)


 Photo: Kate Holt/IRIN
Workers clear out the Kabul river in Afghanistan’s capital

 Only 48 percent of Afghanistan’s population have access to safe drinking water and only 37 percent use improved sanitation facilities - with serious health implications, especially for children, according to the UN Children's Fund.
While some parts of the country are physically water scarce, most people lack access to safe water because of inadequate infrastructure and poor management rather than insufficient resources, says a report published by the Centre for Policy and Human Development at Kabul University.
“During three decades of turmoil in Afghanistan, water supply infrastructure has been neglected or destroyed, while the relevant institutions responsible for management and service delivery have collapsed," said the report entitled Afghanistan Human Development Report 2011.
"Around 73 percent of the population relies on improvised and inadequate facilities to supply water, while water sources are becoming increasingly polluted and overexploited in places like Kabul."

View the Slideshow : http://www.irinnews.org/photo/Default.aspx?id=22

Some 70 percent of the urban population live in unplanned areas or in illegal settlements, while 95 percent lack access to improved toilets. In Kabul 80 percent of the population live in unplanned settlements where poor sanitation and lack of access to safe drinking water are common.

http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportID=93156

POVERTY: India: Oxfam drive to fight poverty

STAFF REPORTER Guwahati, June 1:

Oxfam, an international confederation of 14 organisations working worldwide to find lasting solutions to poverty and injustice, launched its anti-poverty campaign, Grow, in the state today.
Talking to the media, Oxfam’s national humanitarian hub manager, Zubin Zaman, said the organisation would work for food sovereignty of the small farmers and try to explore the factors that contribute to hike of food prices in Assam, as a part of the campaign.
Oxfam has undertaken sanitation works in disaster-prone areas of Dhemaji, Lakhimpur, Majuli and Morigaon, along with the local NGOs.
Grow, a global campaign, aims to fight poverty in collaboration with governments, companies and international bodies like G20.
In India, the campaign was simultaneously launched today in Guwahati, Hyderabad, Lucknow, Mumbai and Patna. Zaman said the campaign has been launched for four years initially.
Oxfam observed that despite Indian economy having grown considerably between 1990 and 2005, the number of hungry people increased by 65 million, more than the total population of France. This was because economic development excluded the rural poor and social protection schemes failed to reach them
“Around 60 years later, unfortunately, hunger and malnutrition remain major issues in India. About 44 per cent of children under the age of five are underweight and 48 per cent are stunted. Because of the country’s large population, India is home to 42 per cent of the world’s underweight children and 31 per cent of stunted children,” Zaman said.
He, however, said the condition of Assam was not as bad as the other states of the country in terms as food availability. However, continuous erosion and population increase point to tough times ahead. Zaman said in the agricultural field, they would give emphasis on research activities in a bid to make farmers dependent on their own seeds rather than imported ones. Besides, they would also examine the role of the imported cost factor in increasing food prices in Assam.
Zaman said Assam would be affected by the imminent global food crisis in the coming days. According to the projection of Oxfam, demand for food will rise by 70 per cent by 2050 globally while food production capacity will steadily decline.

http://www.telegraphindia.com/1110602/jsp/northeast/story_14059288.jsp

POVERTY: Sanitary energy thru toilets

May 23, 2011


2.5 billion people throughout the world don't have access to their own toilet. This leaves 2.5 billion people vulnerable to diseases such as cholera, diarrhea. These diseases are spread thru contaminated water as people are forced to use the outdoors instead of toilets to relive themselves.
Some non-profits and some social entrepreneurs have looked at ways of solving the problem by providing sanitation solutions to the poor. A team of engineers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have found a way make a business venture out of the human waste. Instead of selling inexpensive toilets to the poor, they have found away to convert the waste into energy that can be sold back into the grid.
From Forbes Magazine blogs, writer Elmira Bayrasli introduces us to Sanergy founded by MIT grads David Auerbach and Ani Vallabhaneni.
Auerbach and Vallabhaneni knew what they didn’t know. What they didn’t know was that they couldn’t draft up a sanitation solution in Boston – without the insights and input of those in the developing world. Committed to launching a start-up that would truly work for the poor, the two, along with a team of MIT classmates traveled to Kenya for the answers. Kenya, with eight million without access to proper sanitation but a university filled with bright and eager minds to help solve the problem, was an ideal testing ground. In January 2010 the team, in collaboration with the University of Nairobi, conducted a user survey among Kenya’s urban poor, inquiring about their lives. “It was important to us that we found a solution that fit into their lives, not our imagination of their lives,” Auerbach says.
What they found was that Kenya’s poor were interested in having compact stalls that could fit into the tight spaces of their usually one-room homes, rather than large community outhouses. They wanted a “permanent” feel to the stalls rather than the flimsy feel of a porta-potty. As a result, Auerbach, Vallabhaneni and their Sanergy team that includes engineers, architects and designers drew up plans for a 3×5 toilet made out of thin shell cement that is locally produced for $200 per unit. Each toilet is designed for a 100 uses per day. They are units, which also collect waste in double-sealed 30L containers, rather than pits, or septic tanks “that are then drained into waterways.” It is this waste collection that is key.
More than where to go to the bathroom, how to dispose of human waste is, as Auerbach points out, a primary reason that no one touches the issue of toilets. That was Sanergy’s opportunity. Recognizing that, though “messy,” human waste can be converted through anaerobic digestion to produce fertilizer or electricity. It is also where the Sanergy team recognized that it could generate revenue.
Sanergy produces toilets that are franchised to local operators who charge around $0.06 per use. Currently the company has two toilets serving approximately 150 each day. One is at Bridge International school (a for-profit school supported by the Omidyar Network), the other in Kibera, Kenya’s largest slum. These local operators keep all revenues. That, Auerbach says, is an incentive for them to clean, maintain and “market” the toilets. The operators then work with groups who collect the waste daily and bring it to facilities where it is converted to energy. “The waste from each toilet generates Sanergy revenues of $1250 per year.” The waste from 10 million creates a potential market of $178 million per year. Brown gold.
http://povertynewsblog.blogspot.com/2011/05/sanitary-energy-thru-toilets.html

MALNUTRITION: Niger: World Bank to finance safety net for a million people

20/05/2011
The World Bank ’s Board approved today a new credit of US$70 million to implement a comprehensive social safety net system in Niger, where an estimated 60 percent of people lived below the poverty line in 2008 and over half the population lacks food security.
The funds will support about one million people over five years in a country hard hit by frequent drought and high food prices.
While Niger’s frequent food crises have so far been addressed mostly through short-term emergency assistance, the new safety net system will help poor and food-insecure people to access regular cash transfer and cash-for-work programs. It will focus on the five regions of Dosso, Maradi, Tahoua, Tillaberi and Zinder, where poverty is most concentrated and people are most vulnerable to food insecurity.
“An efficient safety net system is a solid investment for the future of Niger, where chronic malnutrition threatens the lives of hundreds of thousands of children during frequent mid-year famines,” said Ousmane Diagana, World Bank Country Director for Niger. “When vulnerable households can access a system that protects them from shocks, human development indicators such as nutritional status and school enrollment are very likely to improve over time and Niger’s economy stands to gain from higher productivity.”
In 2006, chronic malnutrition as measured by stunting (low height-for-age) was estimated at 50 percent among children under five years of age, making Niger the second-worst affected country in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Through a small but regular cash transfer of about US$20 (10,000 FCFA) per month for 24 months, 80,000 households, each consisting of seven to eight people on average, will benefit from an increase in income over a period of five years. Payments will be made to women through designated payment agencies, mostly microfinance institutions and mobile phone companies, and are expected to significantly improve food consumption among registered households.
As a soft condition, those receiving cash will be required to attend training and sensitization sessions aimed at improving household health, nutrition, and sanitation practices. This dimension will be developed with the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and implemented by non-governmental organizations.
Through cash-for-work programs in areas affected by temporary acute food insecurity, about 15,000 people will receive approximately 60 days of temporary work annually, for a total of 60,000 people over five years. Non-governmental organizations will be hired to supervise participants during the agricultural off-season in activities such as soil conservation, rehabilitation of small infrastructure, and sanitation projects. Wages will be set at about US$2.2 per day—slightly below the market wage—to discourage participation of better-off households and reach those who need temporary income support through cash for work.
“This project has been designed in collaboration with the government on the basis of years of World Bank -supported analysis of Niger’s particular challenges,” said Carlo del Ninno, Senior Economist with the World Bank ’s Africa Region. “This analysis suggests that cash transfers to poor people for at least 18 months have a positive impact; and that essential family practices campaigns do improve overall family health and children’s nutritional status.”
The new financing is in the form of a credit from the International Development Association (IDA), the World Bank ’s fund for the poorest, under standard IDA terms.
http://finchannel.com/news_flash/World/87427_World_Bank_to_finance_safety_net_for_a_million_people_in_Niger/

POVERTY: Fast-growing Asian economies may be flush with money but filthy toilets remain a blight across the region

MARTIN ABBUGAO SINGAPORE - May 04 2011

Fast-growing Asian economies may be flush with money but filthy toilets remain a blight across the region despite rising standards of living, with dire effects on poverty reduction and public health.

Social activists say dismal sanitation facilities are causing preventable diseases in poor communities where people would readily spend money on a mobile phone -- but not on a latrine.

"I think it's very prevalent," said Jack Sim, a Singaporean businessman who founded the sanitation advocacy group World Toilet Organisation. "The handphone is the competitor of the toilet."
Asia has led the rebound from the 2008 to 2009 global recession and major institutions like the World Bank and International Monetary Fund are predicting strong economic growth in the years ahead.
US business magazine Forbes says Asia now has the second largest population of billionaires worldwide at 332, behind the United States' 413 while leapfrogging Europe's 300.
But in Asia's teeming urban slums and impoverished villages, toilet facilities are either non-existent or rudimentary.
"The lack of good toilets as well as sanitation is still a problem in Asia," said Babar Kibir of Bangladesh-based Brac, one of the world's biggest non-government organisations.

Charity alone won't help
Sanitation has an "immense effect" on poverty reduction, Kibir said. "It has linkages with poverty, child mortality, combating disease and environmental sustainability," the director of Brac's Water, Sanitation and Hygiene Programme, or Wash, told Agence France-Presse.
People living in poor sanitary conditions are vulnerable to illness which often prevents them from finding regular employment, Kibir said, adding that much of the meagre income they earn would be spent on medical treatment.
Diarrhoea, malnutrition, arrested physical growth, loss of eyesight, typhoid, dysentery and hepatitis are diseases commonly associated with poor sanitation.
"Poor people, particularly women and children, can enjoy protection from diseases, malnutrition and death by using safe water and sanitation facilities including improved hygiene practices," said Kibir.
Singapore's Sim said charity alone cannot help solve the problem of an estimated 2,5-billion people worldwide without access to proper sanitation.
Businesses, governments, banks, micro-finance institutions and NGOs must band together to create a business model that can offer affordable and sustainable toilet systems to the poor, he said.

'Aspirational goal'
Sim, organiser of an annual conference called the World Toilet Summit, estimated the global market for sanitation hardware at one trillion dollars.
"I hope that the commercial sector comes in ... We need to go to scale, we need to see this as a wonderful business opportunity."
In Bangladesh, one of Asia's poorest countries, Brac's Wash programme provides micro-loans to the poor to build toilet facilities, charging only a minimum service charge. Grants are given only to the very poor.
But the programme goes beyond just providing latrines -- it comes as an entire package, which includes designing and building eco-friendly toilets and raising awareness in the community about the need for good sanitation.
Men, women and adolescents are taught good hygiene practices, while local community and religious leaders and micro-credit groups are roped in to help instil the message, Kibir said.
Sim said some aid agencies focus on building toilets but neglect the education part.
"They want to count how many toilets they have given, but they are not counting how many toilets are being used," Sim said.
People should be taught that a good toilet is an "aspirational goal" that can boost self-esteem and social standing, apart from improving health -- and toilet bowls could even be given as wedding gifts, he said.
Citing Japan's impeccably clean toilets, Sim said: "The peer pressure is there -- that when you don't have a clean toilet, you are shaming your company, your building, your country, your community.
"The toilet tells a lot about the culture of the people. They can be carrying Louis Vuitton handbags but if their toilets are so dirty that shows they are still an immature society, they're still not sophisticated, not elegant," Sim said.
 http://mg.co.za/article/2011-05-04-filthy-toilets-a-blight-on-asian-prosperity/

MALNUTRITION: Guatemala: Child malnutrition caused by more than lack of food

Susan Martin : American Academy of Pediatrics
DENVER –- Giving poor families land on which to grow crops has been shown to improve child nutrition. New research also shows that giving families non-agricultural land and better housing also is beneficial for children's growth and nutrition. Study shows living conditions, sanitation and community organization play role in child growth

Results of the study of child malnutrition in rural Guatemala will be presented Sunday, May 1, at the Pediatric Academic Societies (PAS) annual meeting in Denver.
Guatemala's rural populations suffer from one of the most unequal land distributions in Latin America. About 2 percent of the population owns 70 percent of all productive farmland. To remedy this, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have raised money to buy private land and donate it to poor farmers so they can grow crops. However, urbanization and lack of land have led NGOs to distribute land for housing instead of farming.
Asya Agulnik, MD, MPH, and her colleagues looked at the effects of this change in land distribution on child health in coffee-growing areas of Guatemala. Researchers compared child malnutrition rates in five villages, four of which received non-agricultural land and brick houses in organized communities, along with improved sanitation. Families in the fifth community continued to live in squatter settlements on plantations.
Using WHO growth curves, investigators compared weight-for-age measurements of 242 children in these communities before and after the land distribution.
Before the moves, about 37 percent of children younger than 38 months were moderately malnourished, while just over 7 percent were severely malnourished. Twenty months after families received land and houses, malnutrition rates dropped among children in the same age group; roughly 19 percent were diagnosed with moderate malnutrition, and 5 percent were severely malnourished. Older children who were not breastfeeding at the time their family received land allotments and housing experienced the greatest nutritional benefit.
Meanwhile, children who remained in squatter settlements experienced worsening malnutrition.

"Malnutrition is a major problem for the health of children under 5 years of age in rural Mayan Guatemalan villages," said Dr. Agulnik, lead author of the study and a resident at Children's Hospital Boston. "This study demonstrates that in areas where land scarcity is a major problem, land distributions supporting improved housing and community organization can improve child nutrition without changing a family's income. It also suggests that in our population, living conditions, sanitation, crowding and community organization play a major role in causing child malnutrition."
The study underscores the fact that childhood malnutrition is not only about food, said study co-author Paul Wise, MD, MPH, FAAP, who created a program at Stanford University in California called Children in Crisis to improve health care to children living in politically unstable regions. "While this study documents the terrible toll of poverty on child health, it also emphasizes the interaction between the child, infections, community life and the exercise of political power."


The Pediatric Academic Societies (PAS) are four individual pediatric organizations who co-sponsor the PAS Annual Meeting – the American Pediatric Society, the Society for Pediatric Research, the Academic Pediatric Association, and the American Academy of Pediatrics. Members of these organizations are pediatricians and other health care providers who are practicing in the research, academic and clinical arenas. The four sponsoring organizations are leaders in the advancement of pediatric research and child advocacy within pediatrics, and all share a common mission of fostering the health and well being of children worldwide. For more information, visit www.pas-meeting.org. Follow news of the PAS meeting on Twitter at http://twitter.com/PedAcadSoc.
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2011-05/aaop-cmc042711.php

POVERTY: ZIMBABWE: Threat of waterborne disease from unsafe water

HARARE, 15 April 2011 (IRIN)
 Photo: IRIN : Raw sewage flows in a Harare township in 2007 and was seen as the catalyst for the cholera outbreak the following year

Jennifer Madongonda, 43, shares a seven-roomed house with three other families in the low-income suburb of Budiriro, about 15km southwest of the Zimbabwean capital, Harare. Seven months ago the municipality cut off water supply because they couldn’t pay the bill.
"Water supplies to this suburb are very erratic. People get running water at most four times a week and for short periods, but for us who live at this house, it means nothing because we accumulated a huge bill that we are struggling to pay," Madongonda told IRIN.
"We used to rely on the boreholes that were set up in 2008 but most of them have broken down and no one has come to repair them. Our neighbours don't want to share their water because they are afraid they will accumulate huge bills too."
Budiriro was regarded as the epicentre of the cholera epidemic that began in August 2008 and lasted for a year before it was officially declared at an end in July 2009. The waterborne disease killed more than 4,000 people and infected nearly 100,000 others, and all water sources were found to be contaminated in the working class ssuburb.
Many neighbourhoods had dug shallow wells after the collapse of water and sanitation infrastructure in Zimbabwe’s economic implosion, creating ideal conditions for the proliferation of cholera, which infects the gastrointestinal system, causing vomiting and diarrhoea that can lead to acute dehydration; left untreated, it can kill within 24 hours.
To combat cholera, donor organizations, including the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) Zimbabwe, drilled scores of boreholes, but many have since fallen into disrepair and at night it is not uncommon to see long queues at the few remaining working boreholes as residents jostle to get water for the next day.
We now cook at all sorts of times - sometimes at midnight or early morning - when we manage to get water
"We now cook at all sorts of times - sometimes at midnight or early morning - when we manage to get water. We can hardly spare any to wash clothes because we don't have containers big enough to store it," Madongonda said.
A stream about 5km away is used for laundry and bathing. "Many women complain of skin problems and we suspect it is because the water is polluted with sewage and dangerous chemicals dumped in the stream by factories. It will not be long before there is another cholera outbreak," she warned.
UNICEF Zimbabwe's head of communications, Micaela Marques de Souza, told IRIN the boreholes drilled "in response to the 2008/09 cholera outbreak were handed over, and are being maintained by Harare City [municipality]".
UNICEF had "also supported training of the staff of Harare City in the operation and maintenance of these boreholes. In order to ease the water shortages in these areas and Harare City, UNICEF has recently provided spares and tool kits [for the boreholes] to the Director of Health Services,” De Souza said.
In 2010 UNICEF drilled 43 additional boreholes in Harare, and is assisting in the rehabilitation of the capital’s main source of water, Morton Jeffery Water Works, where the pumps regularly break down because the municipality does not have enough money to buy spares.
"I am aware of the fact that most of the boreholes, even some drilled last year, have broken down because there are too many residents using them and some of them are careless, but I am surprised that we are supposed to be repairing them," a senior health official in the municipality’s public works department, who declined to be named, told IRIN.

Sanitation
Reticulated water is also becoming scarce In Glen Norah, the suburb next to Budiriro, where boreholes were also sunk to combat the cholera epidemic.
"A lot of people use the bush and buckets to relieve themselves because of the water shortages. Toilets are overflowing and our children suffer from running stomachs most of the time." The tap water was "suspicious", because whenever supplies returned briefly, it was dirty, Glen Norah resident Trymore Purazi, 28, told IRIN.
"We have been advised by health officials to leave the water to settle, but it is difficult to heed this advice because, in most cases, we would have waited the whole day to have water to cook and we would be very hungry," he said.
Chris Magadza, a researcher at the University of Zimbabwe, told participants at a recent workshop that "clinical studies carried out on Harare's water supplies, and the results obtained, revealed that the water bodies carry a significant amount of pollutants, which pose a potential health risk."
http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportID=92487

POVERTY: Malawi: In Praise of Dry Sanitation

Claire Ngozo
 Repairing a latrine in Mgona township, Lilongwe.
Credit: Claire Ngozo/IPS

LILONGWE, Mar 9, 2011 (IPS) - At its best it is waterless, odorless, eminently affordable and has a rich fertiliser as byproduct, yet for residents of Malawi's informal settlements, dry sanitation retains a whiff of the unwanted.
As much as two-thirds of Malawi's two-million strong urban population live in slum conditions without proper toilets. In densely-crowded Lilongwe townships like Mtsiriza, Mgona, or Senti, dozens of people often share a single convenience.
Alex Makande of Mgona township lives in a compound with 83 people. "It is a terrible situation. Mornings are even worse. People queue up to go to the toilet and sometimes we have to ask to use toilets in nearby compounds which are not as crowded."
Access to pipe-borne water is limited in areas like this; sewerage mainlines generally non-existent.
Monalissa Nkhonjera, a communications and learning officer for international NGO WaterAid, explains that an average compound in the shanty townships has eight households, but there is usually only one pit latrine.
WaterAid is working in Lilongwe’s slums, implementing an appropriate, water-sensible solution. "We are promoting the construction of eco-san latrines with slabs as a cover for the pit and with either a tin or grass-thatched roof. The walls are made of baked or unbaked bricks."
The eco-sanitation latrines have two pits. Household ash is scattered into the latrine after every visit to the toilet to minimise smell and speed up decomposition. After one pit fills, use switches to the other, and the waste in the full pit is given time to fully decompose into a rich, safe manure.

Unloved facilities
But Manesi Phiri of Senti, another informal settlement on the outskirts of Lilongwe where WaterAid is promoting them, remains unsatisfied.
"Flush toilets are more convenient. All you need is to flush out the excreta after a visit to the toilet. Pit latrines compound the low status of us poor people. They are very demeaning," she told IPS.
Pit latrines, she said, are a marker of poverty, whereas flush toilets are a status symbol. Phiri also said communities in urban townships do not have much use for the fertiliser that is produced in the eco-sanitation latrines.


"We do not have gardens in our communities and we do not cultivate any crops so we do not need the fertiliser. We cannot sell this kind of fertiliser to city dwellers; they use chemical fertiliser for their kitchen gardens as they find the fertiliser from the latrines disgusting."
Phiri concedes the fertiliser from the eco-san toilets is free of any odor and looks like any other compost; but she insists that people are put off just thinking of where it comes from.
In Lilongwe's informal settlements, people are certainly not rejecting eco-sanitation out of hand, though Makande would also prefer a flush toilet: "But this is just a dream for now. We have to continue to use the pit latrines at our disposal and the eco-san latrines are better than the conventional latrines so we must adopt them," said the man, who works as a night guard in Area 10, one of Lilongwe’s affluent areas.

Should anyone flush?
The poor have limited choice. But with climate change threatening the water supplies of cities not only in Malawi but across the Southern Africa region, a comprehensive plan for urban areas might need to see wealthy people adopt composting toilets.
A toilet uses anywhere from six to 11 litres per flush - the fortunate 640,000 who have access to flush toilets in Malawi each represent a much greater strain on aging water systems than their counterparts in the slums. Millions - hundreds of millions of litres of water are effectively squandered flushing waste into a sewage network, at the end of which it needs further treatment before it can be safely released into the country's waterways.
In Area 43, one of Lilongwe's most affluent neighbourhoods, IPS found Richard Gulumba has an eco-san latrine in his backyard. He had it constructed for use during Lilongwe's frequent water outages.
"But my family and I still find it hard to use a latrine. It reminds me of life in the village and that is not desirable. I grew up poor and I do not want to be reminded the experiences I went through and using a pit latrine is one thing I do not want to do now that I can afford better things like a flush toilet," said Gulumba.
Like his wealthy counterparts across Africa, perhaps even the world, Gulumba is likely unaware of the many fancier cousins to the twin-chambered latrines being built in the slums. Though prejudice against dry sanitation is pretty widespread, more upmarket waterless toilets can be found from Mexico to Canada to Sweden to Australia.

Stylish latrines
The South African company ECOSAN manufactures a self-contained dry sanitation unit that cleverly uses the action of opening and closing the lid to drive a screw that moves waste into a cleverly ventilated chamber where it turns into compost without further ado. Australia's Nature Loo provides a system with exchangeable composting chambers and a fan that ensures proper oxygen flow to speed the breakdown.
Inside the house: a "warm white" pedestal with a "honey oak" seat... even the fussiest guests won't panic until they can't find a handle to flush.
WaterAid’s Nkhonjera says composting latrines, which prevent pollution of groundwater, are the best option for slum dwellers and rural communities. "These areas are informal settlements and they do not have access to running water. Putting up flush toilets will not be realistic."
If Southern Africa's wealthier city dwellers also considered the best use of available water, dry sanitation could take up a more exalted place as a solution to growing water stress.

http://ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=54769

POVERTY: India's disparity shows in grinding poverty, wealth

Ravi Nessman,
November 1, 2010


Rafiq Maqbool / AP
At the Rafiq Nagar slum in Mumbai, a boy chats on a cell phone. Nearly every destitute family in the slum has a cell phone, and some have more than one.
The Mumbai slum of Rafiq Nagar has no clean water for its shacks made of ripped tarp and bamboo. No garbage pickup along the rocky, pocked earth that serves as a road. No power except from haphazard cables strung overhead illegally. And not a single toilet or latrine for its 10,000 people. Yet nearly every destitute family in the slum has a cell phone. Some have three.
When President Obama visits India on Saturday, he will find a country of startlingly uneven development and perplexing disparities, where more people have cell phones than access to a toilet, according to the United Nations.
It is a country buoyed by a vibrant business world of call centers and software developers, but hamstrung by a bloated, corrupt government that has failed to deliver the barest of services.
Its estimated growth rate of 8.5 percent a year is among the highest in the world, but its roads are crumbling.
It offers cheap, world-class medical care to Western tourists at private hospitals yet has some of the worst child mortality and maternal death rates outside sub-Saharan Africa.
And while tens of millions have benefited from India's rise, many more remain mired in some of the worst poverty in the world.
Businessman Mukesh Ambani, the world's fourth-richest person, is just finishing off a new $1 billion skyscraper-house in Mumbai with 27 floors and three helipads, touted as the most expensive home on Earth. Yet farmers still live in shacks of mud and cow dung.
The cell phone frenzy bridges all worlds. Cell phones are sold amid the Calvin Klein and Clinique stores under the soaring atriums of India's new malls, and in the crowded markets of its working-class neighborhoods. Bare shops in the slums sell pre-paid cards for as little as 20 cents next to packets of chewing tobacco while street hawkers peddle car chargers at traffic lights.
The spartan Beecham's in New Delhi's Connaught Place, one of the country's seemingly ubiquitous mobile phone dealers, is overrun with lunchtime customers of all classes looking for everything from a $790 BlackBerry Torch to a basic $26 Nokia.
Store manager Sanjeev Malhotra adds to a decades-old - and still unfulfilled - Hindi campaign slogan promising food, clothing and shelter. "Roti, kapda, makaan" and "mobile," he riffs, laughing. "Basic needs."
There were more than 670 million cell phone connections in India by the end of August, a number that has been growing by close to 20 million a month, according to government figures.
Yet U.N. figures show that only 366 million Indians have access to a private toilet or latrine, leaving 665 million to defecate in the open.
'Fundamental things'
"At least tap water and sewage disposal - how can we talk about any development without these two fundamental things? How can we talk about development without health and education?" says Anita Patil-Deshmukhl, executive director of Pukar, an organization that conducts research and outreach in the slums of Mumbai.
India's leaders say they are sympathetic to the problem.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, an economist credited with unleashing India's private sector by loosening government regulation, talks about growth that benefits the masses of poor people as well as a burgeoning middle class of about 300 million. He describes a roaring Maoist insurgency in the east - which feeds in large part on the poor's discontent - as the country's biggest internal security threat.
Sonia Gandhi, chief of the ruling Congress Party, has pushed laws guaranteeing a right to food and education, as well as a gargantuan rural jobs program for nearly 100 million people. But as many as 800 million Indians still live on less than $2 a day, even as Mumbai's stock exchange sits near record highs.
Untenable situation
Many fear the situation is unsustainable.
"Everybody understands the threat. Everybody recognizes that there is a gap, that this could be the thing that trips up this country," says Anand Mahindra, vice chairman and managing director of the Mahindra & Mahindra manufacturing company.
Private companies have tried to fill that gap, and Tata sells a $16 water purifier for the poor. Mafias provide water and electricity to slumdwellers at a cost far higher than what wealthy Indians pay for basic services.
"For every little thing, we have to pay," says Nusrat Khan, a 35-year-old maid and single parent who raises her four children on less than $67 a month and blames the government for her lack of access to water and a toilet.
The government is spending $350 million a year to build toilets in rural areas. Bindeshwar Pathak, the founder of the Sulabh Sanitation and Social Reform Movement, estimates the country needs about 120 million more latrines - likely the largest sanitation project in world history.
"Those in power, only they can change the situation," says Pathak, who claims to have helped build a million low-cost latrines across India over the past 40 years. "India can achieve this - if it desires."
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/11/01/BU2K1G4BCD.DTL&feed=rss.business

SANITATION: VIETNAM: Teaching new sanitation habits

Photo: Tharum Bun/IRIN

Water and sanitation challenges continue in VietnamCHAU DOC, 28 October 2010 (IRIN) - Vann Sopheap, an ethnic Cambodian who lives in this small border town in Vietnam, prefers the outdoors to the bathroom. "It smells much nicer outside," he says. "The toilets are too dirty."
Villagers such as Vann are often reluctant to use latrines, a behaviour that contributes to the prevalence of diarrhoeal diseases in Vietnam, which can sometimes become deadly, especially for children under-five.
According to the UN, some 10 million people in Vietnam continue to practise open defecation.
Each year more than 20,000 people die in the country because of a lack of clean water, poor sanitation and hygiene, the World Health Organization (WHO) reports.
Sanitation lags behind other MDGs
In the past two decades, speedy economic growth and efficient government policies have led to "considerable gains" in child health, Lotta Sylwander, the country representative for the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF), recently told government officials and international donors in the capital, Hanoi.
The country has achieved almost all the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) "well ahead of schedule", making it a leader among many Asian countries, reveals a report published by UNICEF in September. But progress in sanitation has been slow.
In 2006, the latest year for which data is available, just over half of the rural population had access to "improved" sanitation facilities, as did 88 percent of the urban population, according to UNICEF.
Twenty million children, or 59 percent of all children in Vietnam, do not have access to proper sanitation. About 73 percent of schools have latrines, but fewer than half meet national standards. A lack of access to clean sanitation and hygiene causes about half of all communicable diseases in the country.
"Poverty can be one reason for this, but education and culture play very important roles as well," Thowai Zai, head of the UNICEF water and sanitation programme, told IRIN.
Many people living in rural and remote mountainous areas consider open defecation to be cleaner, he said. In poor areas, especially in northern mountainous regions and the central highlands, people have much scarcer access to toilets, Zai added.
Others defecate in rivers and ponds, the same water sources they use for cooking, cleaning and bathing.
Some experts argue that NGOs need to more effectively educate villagers. "Villagers know it's no good to poop into the water," Jack Sim, founder of the World Toilet Organisation, told IRIN from Singapore.
"The only thing needed is to reinforce that message, because old habits take time to change," he added.
Community approach
Merely providing toilets does not guarantee local people will use them, experts say.
To encourage more efficient use of latrines and good hygiene, in 2009 the Ministry of Health introduced a programme called community-led total sanitation (CLTS), in several poor provinces throughout the country, such as Dien Bien, Lao Cai, Kon Tum, Ninh Thuan, and An Giang.
Rather than NGOs subsidizing the construction of individual toilets for each household, the project attempts to mobilize communities to analyze their own sanitation problems and agree on their own solutions.
UNICEF hopes the villages can become "open-defecation-free".
Earlier this year, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) approved a US$45 million loan for a large water supply and sanitation project in six central Vietnamese provinces.
The loan will be used to improve toilets in schools, hospitals and homes. About 350,000 people will reap the benefits, according to the ADB, which hopes the project will be completed by 2016.
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