Sanitation and Hygiene of Darjeeling City: A Crisis for Women and Adolescent Girls

Abstract

By the end of the Millennium Development Goal's target year, 2015, India had been declared as a country, which has made moderate progress in terms of improvement in basic sanitation provision for all. Yet open defecation is still a regular practice of a significant proportion of the population in both urban and rural areas. The Indian government has been trying to address this problem for the last three decades through different programmes. However, though the effort is laudable, in reality, the countrywide situation is not so praiseworthy. Lack of sanitation provisions affects people in different ways with different intensities along the lines of class, gender, age, disability, and marginality. In Darjeeling city, due to lack of proper sanitation facilities, a significant portion of the population uses public toilets, which are less in number compared to the demand. People face a variety of difficulties and hurdles in using public toilets, and as a result, continue to practice open defecation during the night and early morning. Among the users, women and adolescent girls suffer more than the others. Moreover, in this city, a significant portion of the population faces acute water crisis during the dry months. This empirical study tries to explore the different ways through which women and adolescent girls are affected by the lack of safe sanitation facilities within the house premises. The article also argues that lack of sanitation provision should be considered as a matter of violence against women and adolescent girls because the situation makes them vulnerable to the risk of being violated or sexually abused.

Rural Settlement Expansion and its Effect on Food Security in Salanpur, West Bengal, India

“…According to the field survey, 32% of the households fails to have the toilet facilities within the premises of the house. This observation bear resonance to the research findings of Koner (2018) where she demonstrates the crisis faced by women and girls due to the lack of adequate sanitation facilities in Darjeeling town, West Bengal.…”

Making the Case for a Female-Friendly Toilet

“…Over the course of their reproductive lifespans, adolescent girls and women have increased and fluctuating water and sanitation-related requirements as compared to men, linked to menstruation, pregnancy (e.g., post-partum bleeding, miscarriage, stress urinary incontinence), and other common health conditions such as those that involve increased vaginal bleeding (e.g., uterine fibroids, endometriosis). Research has found that the challenges posed by long public lines or other situations causing anxiety related to the inconvenient access to safe and clean toilets outside their homes help to create, among girls and women, a range of coping mechanisms with potential health consequences, such as reducing their intake of liquids or food [29][30][31]. Although there is a need for more rigorous research on these associations, dehydration and regulating urination may increase risks for urinary tract infections and chronic constipation [32][33][34][35][36].…”

Confusion and Making Sense of Menstruation: A Micro-level Study of Village Khagawal, Chandauli District, Uttar Pradesh

“…These observations bear resonance to the importance of Clean India or Swachh Bharat Abhiyan launched in 2014 by honourable Prime Minister of India, Mr Narendra Damodardas Modi (Bhattacharyya, 2014;Bhattacharyya and Pulla, 2019;Das,2018). One has to acknowledge that in the aftermath of the launch of the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan aimed at creating a clean and hygienic landscape by building 'basic hygiene and sanitation infrastructure' through the construction of toilets and complete elimination of open defecation (Bhattacharyya, 2014b;Bhattacharyya and Pulla, 2019;Das, 2018: 1;Koner, 2018). 1 "While the society has [gradually started] welcome[ing] these social initiatives, its reach and impact will perhaps take some time to reflect given India's geographical extent and bureaucratic challenges at both federal and sub-national level" (Das, 2018:1).…”

“…His life has been captured in 2018, motion picture, 'Padman', directed by R. Balki, and acted by Akshay Kumar, Sonam Kapoor and Radhika Apte. This picture is an excellent demonstration of how the villagers, whose social and cultural training are embedded in tacit taboo about menstruation (Koner, 2018) treated the pad man where he received vehement unacceptability from his society. Evidently, the cost of these napkins are almost one-third of the cost of commercial napkins.…”