Will the Railway Budget 2016 Offer Concrete Plan on Bio-Toilets?

Only lip service has been paid on issue of bio-toilets in trains, will the railway budget offer some plan of action?

Railway ministers have been making references in budget speeches to faecal discharge from trains and sanitation for at least forty years but little has changed. Twenty years ago, a railway minister announced ‘encouraging results’ from ‘experimenting with biologically degradable toilet system’; going by that, train toilets in India should have gone green. But Suresh Prabhu told Parliament in his speech last year that a third of the toilets in trains have been converted and that the “Research, Design and Standards Organisation (RDSO) has been tasked with making available within a period of six months a design for vacuum toilets.”

One cannot assess the progress made on this score over time by the railways because targets and achievements are not displayed in the annual statistical sheet on its website.

Prabhu is committed to sanitation and there has been visible change at stations and in trains since he took charge in November 2014. So he protested rather vehemently when a journalist complained that the situation was unchanged at an interaction at Delhi’s Foreign Correspondent’s Club earlier this month. ‘There has been a huge improvement,’ Prabhu said. He was getting ‘thousands and perhaps tens of thousands of tweets,’ from ordinary people about the change. ‘It is not hundred percent, it is not universal,’ Prabhu said, ‘but extremely widespread.’ There is hope when a minister gets shirty on sanitation.

Chorus for Cleanliness Since the 70s

But Prabhu will have to remain in office long enough, and ensure cleanliness as part of railway culture, for any change to be lasting.

That there has been public anxiety on this issue is obvious from Kamlapati Tripathi declaring in Parliament in March 1976 that the ‘standard of coach cleanliness and train lighting’ had improved along with punctuality.

At that time access was an issue. Madhu Dandavate was concerned about convenience and announced in his June 1977 budget speech that he had given instructions for second class coach prototypes to be built ‘with more toilets and better water facilities’.  Directives had also been sent to ‘provide toilets at concourses.’

ABA Ghani Khan Choudhury, the undisputed leader of Malda, announced in his 1983 speech ‘multi-disciplinary task forces headed by a senior officer’ at 51 important stations ‘with a view to attaining a high degree of cleanliness at stations and in trains.’ ‘I place great emphasis on cleanliness, not only at station premises but also in trains,’ Bansi Lal declared in February 1985, indicating how intractable the problem was.

Those Who Paid Lip Service to Cleanliness

Subsequent railways ministers, Madhav Rao Scindia, George Fernandes and CK Jaffer Sharief, either did not mention toilets or made passing references to them in budget speeches.

Toilets did not figure in the budget speeches of Ram Vilas Paswan and Nitish Kumar as well. Mamata Banerjee in 2001 said ‘a number of pay-and-use toilets will be provided and mechanised cleaning will be undertaken.’

In July 2005, Lalu Prasad Yadav as UPA’s minister initiated a project on ‘environment friendly coach toilet discharge systems’ and a budgetary allocation of Rs 4,000 crore was done with an aim of providing green toilets in all 36,000 coaches by the end of 2012.

Seven years later, Prabhu could certify the conversion of just 17,388 holes-in-the-floor to bio-toilets in his February 2015 address to parliament.

Saga of Hollow Promises

Dinesh Trivedi, who presented a budget but was not in office to see it passed, made 13 references to toilets in his speech. There was a paragraph on green toilets. By next year 2,500 coaches would be equipped with them, he said. The DRDO-developed bio-toilets were ‘currently under extended trials to test their efficacy and suitability’ and ‘trials with retention-evacuation type toilets such as vacuum toilets are also planned on premium trains.’

In 2013, Pawan Kumar Bansal promised progressive extension of bio-toilets in trains. Sadanand Gowda also made vague promises.

Replying to a notice from the National Human Rights Commission on ending open defecation in February 2014, the railways set 2022 as the deadline ─ three years ahead of the World Health Organization’s target.

In February last year, Prabhu announced a new department to keep stations and trains clean because ‘cleanliness is a major area of dissatisfaction.’ Toilet facilities in stations and trains need major improvement, he said. He proposed toilets in 650 stations, a step-up from 120 stations the previous year.  He set a target of bio-toilets in 17,000 more coaches. And then the old chestnut:  ‘Research, Design and Standards Organisation (RDSO) has also been tasked with making available within a period of six months a design for vacuum toilets.’

Be prepared to hear more of the same rhetoric in few days time.

(Vivian Fernandes is editor of www.smartindianagriculture.in)