Look who’s openly defecating

Recently, I read in the papers with great interest (but without any surprise, because nothing I read in the papers surprises me anymore) that apparently our country in now open-defecation free. Thanks to the hard work done by the prime minister’s Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, we are now 110 million latrines richer! In fact, all 1.3 billion of us have been toilet-trained in five years flat. That is efficiency for you!

Of course, there is a bunch of naysayers out there saying that just building latrines is not enough. They are asking if these latrines are actually being used? Do they even have water supply? Are they being maintained properly? How is the sludge being disposed of? Has there been any improvement in our infectious disease and groundwater statistics since we became open-defecation free?

Imaging: Deni Lal Imaging: Deni Lal

But nobody is interested in such anti-national questions. All good, toilet-trained Indians are praising the prime minister’s brilliant Swachh Bharat Mission, which won him a doughnut-shaped, rainbow-hued Global Goalkeeper award from the Gates Foundation—a trophy he can line up right next to the 110 million shiny, white latrines, which are also trophies of a sort, being for show only.

The truth on the ground is that very soon after our prime minister was awarded his multi-coloured doughnut, two young dalit children were beaten to death by upper caste men for defecating in the open in Shivpuri, Madhya Pradesh. Journalists reported that far from being open-defecation free, most houses in Shivpuri do not have any toilets at all.

Open defecation, you see, is still rampant in India. Not only in the literal sense, as done by the two hapless little dalit children, but also in the metaphorical sense. Because we live in a society where our elected leaders are openly taking a dump on us every day—on our Constitution, our human rights, our liberty, our history, our democracy, our forests and our nation.

This open defecation (and desecration) is happening, as defecation normally does—on a daily basis. Regular as clockwork. Sometimes even, if the state has indigestion, several times a day! It has become completely normalised.

When a perfectly legal and entirely constructive letter, written out of concern for the state of the nation, results in sedition charges being slapped on you, that is open defecation on our liberty.

When we are told that the ordinary people in Kashmir are perfectly happy living in what has become virtually an open prison, that is open defecation on our intelligence.

When our home minister says that all Hindu, Buddhist, Sikh, Jain refugees will not have to leave the country, that they will get Indian citizenship and enjoy all the rights of an Indian national, then the deliberate and glaring omission of Muslims is open defecation on our secularism.

When the Supreme Court intervenes only after more than 2,000 trees have been cut down in the Aarey forest, to make way for a metro shed that could have easily been built somewhere else, it is open defecation on our environment, our trees, our lungs and our health.

And, of course, when our shattered, limping economy is passed off as a tremendous success, and the current dark ages we are living in are described as acche din, that is open defecation on our credulity.

Any doctor will tell you that open defecation on a rampant scale poisons both the groundwater and the air and can make people terribly ill. And so, with the commendable zeal and evangelical fervor that is the best quality of the BJP/RSS worker, we, ordinary citizens, too, must set about boldly condemning and dedicatedly weeding out all such open defecators in our society. Only then will our nation truly be open-defecation free.

editor@theweek.in