When Public Toilets Offer Lessons in Civic Policy

Time of India

20 hours ago

Like a game of snakes and ladders, Tamil Nadu's sanitation initiatives move up in the numbers game for a while but slide back frustratingly and start over again. A decade after the
focused on building more toilets for individual households and public places in rural and urban areas, most of the early toilets were dismantled.
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The current focus is on mapping the hotspots in public places where people let go in nature because there are no toilets.
Chennai leads this initiative with a 'pee mapping' programme, where the public is invited to click on a pin on a webpage and drop it at a specific location to indicate where open urination is taking place. Citizens are also encouraged to upload a photo of the site, describe who typically uses it, and mention its characteristics — whether it is near a tree, wall, pavement, open land, or abandoned building.
The initiative is part of the International Toilet Festival (ITF) 3.0, which runs till July 5.
The outcome of the crowdsourced data will be watched keenly. But the fact that problem spots need to be mapped again shows how the Swachh Bharat Mission Urban steel toilets, installed at considerable public cost, failed in many places. Under SBM-U 2.0, Tamil Nadu has approvals for 20,564 public and community toilet seats, behind Maharashtra (31,358) and Uttar Pradesh (23,994), but ahead of West Bengal (17,154), not counting household latrines, as per recent Union govt data.
The state has also tried its hand at toilet innovation. Since 2016, it installed self-cleaning, low-water eToilets at various locations. In 2018, Duke University in North Carolina, US, set up a reinvented version of the conventional toilet at a textile mill in Coimbatore. This model treated and reused liquid waste for flushing while disposing of solids through combustion. These solutions were meant to scale up and solve the basic problem that is now back on the drawing board.
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Coimbatore is now planning a pilot for 'She Toilets', inspired by similar models in north Indian states. Chennai constructed traditional brick-and-mortar toilets at a few locations, but many are either unusable or too filthy. Madurai is building 11 toilets under SBM-U, including two community facilities.
Public toilets were never a hot political trend, unlike summer water booths which provide politicians of all shades an opportunity to display party colours, personalities, and flags.
But the absence of accessible urinals remains a major hurdle for gig workers, autorickshaw and taxi drivers, and pushcart vendors who spend long hours outdoors. Men find convenient spots along roads, notably near rundown buildings, garbage bins, behind parked vehicles, and in dark corners.
Things are more difficult for women. The exceptions are police personnel who use washrooms in any nearby building.
The steel eToilets, each set up at `4.5 lakh, were welcomed as a breakthrough for their automatic cleaning and floor-washing features.
Strangely, they were often simply locked up and later dismantled. The spots where they once stood now show up on maps as open urination sites.
As part of the ITF, a study group inspected facilities at Triplicane in Chennai and made predictable observations: Toilets for disabled users existed, but wheelchair access was unsafe or impractical; units had broken doors or fixtures; odour and hygiene issues were glaring, and there was 'signage confusion' — washrooms for both men and women had pink boards.
These insights should improve upcoming facilities. Greater Chennai Corporation's Namma Chennai app, and its variants used in Tambaram, Avadi, Coimbatore, and other corporations, could go a step further by incorporating feedback on toilet needs, as opposed to just the quality of available facilities.
Crowdsourced mapping to identify sanitation blackspots is not new. It has been used to report flood-prone areas after heavy rain.
The mobile app Safetipin launched a citizen-led rating system for public space safety, tracking lighting, visibility, openness, security, transport access, and gender usage.
Chennai's transport regulator, CUMTA, also sought public input on a comprehensive mobility plan. But a quick user poll might have pinpointed which streets in the city and suburbs need minibus services. Similarly, Chennai metro rail users could be asked which stations lack last-mile connectivity and where those links should go, using the same dropped pin method.
Pedestrians, the most neglected group of road users, could help map areas in need of safe crossings or stricter enforcement. Citizens could also report non-functioning traffic signals or poorly lit intersections, helping the police respond faster.
Similar tools based on the pee point example could help identify which offices in the registration or transport departments are hardest to navigate. Citizens could be asked whether they were forced to pay bribes at a particular govt office for property registration or to a village administrative officer to obtain a patta.
There are credible research organisations to gather such inputs, and the govt now routinely uses consultants. But it is important that this data is made public to build pressure on departments to conduct reforms.
When the pee point survey launched, its non-govt partners cited the "in front of our eyes" nature of the problem that makes it easy for citizens to mark it on a map. This applies to many other civic issues too, that make urban living challenging, in particular for the elderly and those living with a disability.
The judiciary has already responded to such concerns. The Supreme Court, for example, directed the Centre to frame accessibility rules and upheld citizens' right to unobstructed footpaths. Civic agencies could be asked to poll public views on such issues.
As managers like to say, what gets measured gets managed. It could begin with toilets and expand to everything else that can be usefully measured.
(The writer is a Chennai-based journalist)
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