Clogged, dark and dangerous

A first-of-its-kind audit of toilets used by nomadic and denotified tribes in the Thane district conducted last month reveals that Swachh Bharat is a long way off.

For the first 30 years of her life, Deepa Pawar lived in a slum in Sewri. As founder of Anubhuti, which is perhaps the only intersectional feminist organisation led by a woman from a nomadic community, Pawar has often dipped into her lived experiences from that time to raise issues of rights and rehabilitation for her people. A grim memory from then that stayed with her, was access to toilets. Once while in Class IX, she remembers inviting a friend over from school to her 8-by-10-foot kutcha home that she shared with four sisters and mother. Pawar had pasted a schedule chart of her day on one of the walls. When her friend read it, he couldn’t help but laugh. His chart listed activities like sports and tuition, while Pawar had put aside one-and-a-half hours against “toilet”. She recalls feeling awkward then, but “that was my reality”.

Read the full article here: Clogged, dark and dangerous (mid-day.com)