Equity in School Water and Sanitation

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EQUITY IN SCHOOL WATER AND SANITATIONBox 6 Excerpts from focus group discussions with adolescent boys and girlsContrasting voices emerged during group discussions: People who have power discriminate against those who are powerless. Power comes with money,caste, religion, government/police jobs, and the most important is political power. The teachers in our village discriminate against Dalit children. This practice existed even when we werestudying in the primary school. Forward caste children were given preference and they were seated infront. However, things are changing now. The government does not locate hand pumps on a caste basis; people distribute them according tocaste/community to avoid conflict, here also power rules. Dalit boys will not sit on the same platform as forward caste boys not because of respect for the uppercastes, but because they face reprisal. In the same way Sahariya boys do not sit on the same platformas Dalits.Adolescent girls said: While talking about the problems that girls face, a Class 9 SC girl said: ‘Who cares about girls, it’sbetter if they die, at least Rs 200,000 to 300,000 (to be given as dowry) will be saved.’ Girls from SC and Muslim families do not come to school because they work at home and in the fields.Their parents enrol them only for scholarships. If even girls come to know that a particular girl is menstruating, they do not sit next to her. We do not sit with girls who have scabies or a bad cough. In our school, the water is stored in a separate bucket for the use of girls from one community. They arevery dirty and we do not allow them to use the hand pump. We stay away from school for 3 or 4 days every month, we all do that.Adolescent boys said: Everything is being done for girls; they have a toilet (urinal), so what if it is dirty? No one cares aboutboys these days. Teaching should happen in the school, it does not make much difference if the toilets are not there. Wecome to school to learn. Facilities are important, particularly in senior schools, but education is moreimportant. In our time (said adolescents who had dropped out), we did not have these facilities butteachers used to teach, now schools have more facilities, but less studies. Teachers just sit in school (wearing jeans and sunglasses) and ask children to do all sorts of jobs.Children in the primary school carry water to the toilet for teachers and also clean it after them. Wenever cleaned toilets; we would have made the teachers clean them instead! Water and sanitation facilities have improved all over. This was a water scarce area but with handpumps life has become much easier for the people, particularly for women. However construction oftoilets has not helped much as the community is not using them. ‘The health situation has improvedmanifold. We have heard about HIV/AIDS in cities, but there is no case in our village – we have heardthat such patients are cast off from the community. This is wrong. Many young men go to Mumbai fromVaranasi and neighbouring areas and get infected and there is no awareness on the issue in thecommunity.’ The attitude of teachers is extremely negative and they selectively target certain children who areacademically and socially weak. That is why many of us dropped out (said out-of-school boys).Source: Focus group discussions with adolescent girls and boyspreferred not to challenge caste-based behaviouron a public forum. As they have greater exposureto the world outside the village (as compared withtheir sisters in the same village) and were awareof the politics of caste as it plays out in rural areas,they had a realistic approach to social inclusionand exclusion.30
Overcoming Exclusion and Discrimination in South AsiaIndia Country Report4.9 The Dynamics of Inclusionand ExclusionThe dynamics of inclusion and exclusion manifestin many ways and often it is not talked about in theopen; forward caste teachers are vocal and voicetheir prejudices in private or in one-to-oneconversations but do not speak about it in public.The situation on the ground in UP has changed alot in the last ten years and the ascendance of aDalit political party to power has had a positiveimpact. But prejudice and exclusion continues insubtle and not-so-subtle ways. Teachers, especiallyin Lalitpur, were dismissive of the academic potentialof children from extremely poor communities andfrom specific social groups like Sahariya. Almost allthe teachers differentiated between the relativelybetter-off (including Dalits and other sociallydeprived groups) and those who are very poor. Theypointed to poverty and lack of parental educationas one of the reasons for poor performance andexclusion of some children from school.In Mirzapur, most of the children studying ingovernment primary schools are from poor families.However, the profile of students changes in the highschool. Almost one-fourth of the children who enrolin primary schools drop out after Class 5. A numberof studies done over the last ten years show that anoverwhelming proportion of the very poor drop outbefore they reach Class 6 and among them theproportion of Muslim, SC and ST children is farhigher than it is in the other social groups (Jha andJhingran, 2005; Ramachandran, 2004).The area where inclusion and exclusion plays outis in the nature of duties assigned to children. Whilethere are significant differences between the twodistricts, it is fairly clear that children fromeconomically better-off families are exempt fromcleaning toilets with a broom and brush. All childrenmay participate in pouring (actually throwing) waterfrom a distance, sweeping and dusting theclassrooms, picking up litter (like paper and otherarticles on the ground) and fetching water. Parentsdo not like their children to clean the premises andtoilets and they depend on the village sweeper 27paid for by the pradhan for such services. So if thepradhan is proactive and concerned about theschool, a sweeper becomes available, otherwisecleaning the school campus and toilets remains aproblem. Government primary and upper primaryschools do not have any funds to hire a person toclean the premises and they depend on the villagePanchayat and the pradhan to arrange paymentsfor this.4.10 Learning from the StudyThe learning from this study is quite unambiguous:construction of toilets or the installation of handpumps and water tanks is not enough. The contrastbetween Mirzapur and Lalitpur also teaches us oneimportant lesson. The government and civil societyorganizations need to first focus on building anenvironment where cleanliness is appreciated as apositive value. The total sanitation movement inMirzapur has certainly contributed towards changingsocial attitudes and practices. Children who usetoilets properly in school promote toilet cleaning intheir homes and make sure that all family membersuse the toilet properly; they are also more likely tospread the same practices in the village. Yes, goodpractices learnt in school are also transferred to theirhomes, but for this to happen the overallenvironment needs to be positive. Where thegeneral hygiene levels are poor, where the socialfabric is fractured by social conflicts and communityidentities, the school cannot hope to bring aboutlasting change. The school and the community arelinked – one reinforces and strengthens the goodpractices of the other. Equally, the reverse is alsotrue – a school could emerge as an island of sorts,but for the good practice to sustain over a long periodand across different school heads, the communityhas to be appreciative of the good practice.Facilities, their safety, inclusiveness, use andmaintenance: Design, maintenance and recurringfunds are important. One of the important lessonsof this study is that infrastructure provision needsto be backed up with funds for maintenance andrepair, for running costs, and most importantly,systematic education of the users on how to useand how to maintain the infrastructure. Equallysignificant is that the toilets and water sources aredesigned with care. Local people, teachers andtechnicians need to work together to build facilitiesthat are safe to use, and are accessible to all,especially children with special needs, and havesufficient light and ventilation.27The UP government has recently recruited sweepers for villages by passing a Government Order for the Panchayats.31
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Equity in School Water and Sanitation

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