August 1, 2016
ASIA / PACIFIC
THE ASIAN REPORTER n Page 5
Bangladesh stops open defecation in just over a decade
By Julhas Alam
The Associated Press
ORMI, Bangladesh — Answering
nature’s call was once a nightmare
for Rashida Begum, who had to
creep around the jungle for a suitably
private spot. Her home had no toilet, like
the thousands of others in her crowded
cluster of farming villages outside the
capital.
In just over a decade, that’s all changed,
in her neighborhood and many others.
Through a dogged campaign to build
toilets and educate Bangladeshis about
the dangers of open defecation, the densely
populated South Asian nation has
managed to reduce the number of people
who defecate in the open to just one
percent of the 166 million population,
according to the government — down from
42 percent in 2003.
“Once it was our habit to go to the fields
or jungles. Now, it is shameful to us,”
Begum said in Bormi, a cluster of poor
farming villages just outside Dhaka, the
capital. “Even our children do not defecate
openly anymore. We do not need to ask
them; they do it on their own.”
Bangladesh’s success in sanitation —
something so far unattained by its
wealthier neighbor to the south, India —
came from a dogged campaign supported
by 25 percent of the country’s overall
development budget.
“The government has made a huge
commitment,” said Akramul Islam,
director for water, sanitation, and hygiene,
of the development NGO Brac. “The
government decided that funds should go
to the extreme poor who do not have
latrines. So that basically gives a big push
from the public sector for spending on
sanitation.”
The government’s engineers also
partnered with village councils and
charities to spread the message on how
toilets are key to better health. Rising
incomes — moving from an average of
$1,154 in 2012-2013 to $1,314 in the last
fiscal year, according to the World Bank —
also helped to drive demand, Islam said.
Activists say small-scale surveys show
the campaign has improved public health,
though there are not yet any government
statistics to prove it more broadly.
“We see clearly that there is a decline in
waterborne diseases and diarrheal
diseases, so there is a clear link there,”
Islam said, while acknowledging that the
improvement was something “we have to
study.”
Begum said her children have had no
B
stomach illnesses since she installed an
in-house toilet.
Open defecation is considered a major
public-health menace, causing childhood
diarrhea, parasitic worm infections, and
other scourges that contribute to childhood
stunting, malnutrition, and tens of billions
of dollars in lost productivity every year.
Diarrheal diseases kill 700,000 children
every year in India alone — most of which
could have been prevented with better
sanitation.
India has spent about $3 billion since
1986 on campaigning and sanitation
programs, but has not come close to
Bangladesh’s success. Two-thirds of
India’s 1.25 billion people still use the
great outdoors as their public latrine.
About half of Nepal’s 30 million people and
about 20 percent of Pakistan’s 182 million
also do not have facilities at home.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi
has made public sanitation a hallmark of
his “Clean India” drive, promising that
every home would have a toilet by 2019
and setting aside hundreds of millions of
dollars for the job. India has already built
around 20 million toilets, but still has
another 111 million to build to reach its
goal.
Bangladesh’s sanitation victory didn’t
come easy. Millions of dollars from the
government and charities were spent, and
campaign volunteers said they worked
hard to change public attitudes and habits.
Many villagers — particularly men —
preferred going outdoors, where they could
think in private, survey their lands, or just
feel the evening breeze or gaze at the sky.
For women, however, having no toilet was
both a nuisance and a danger, as many
Farewell to VCRs: Japanese maker to shelve once-hit product
By Yuri Kageyama
AP Business Writer
OKYO — Japanese electronics
maker Funai Electric Co. is
yanking the plug on the world’s last
video cassette recorder (VCR).
A company spokesman, who requested
anonymity citing company practice, con-
firmed production would end soon. He said
the company would like to continue pro-
duction to meet customer requests, but
can’t because key component makers are
pulling out due to shrinking demand for
VCRs.
Many families and libraries have con-
tent stored in the VHS format and want to
convert the tapes to DVD or other digital
discs. They can do so using VHS/DVD
converters, known as “combos” in Japan.
Funai will soon roll out such products, the
spokesman said.
Funai’s VCR factory, which is in China,
is off limits to media coverage for security
reasons because other products are made
at the same plant, he said.
Funai began making videotape players
in 1983, and videotape recorders in 1985.
T
The company says they were among its
all-time hit products.
Last year, Funai made 750,000 VHS
machines that played or recorded cassette
tapes. In 2000, it made 15 million, 70 per-
cent for the U.S. market, according to the
company, based in Osaka, central Japan.
Other products have also grown
outdated with the advance of digital and
other technology. That includes film
cameras and floppy disks once used to
store computer content, which were
displaced by smaller memory devices with
larger capacity and by cloud storage.
Owners of VCRs are not as emotionally
attached to their machines as are owners
of Sony Corp.’s discontinued robotic dog
Aibo, or the Boombox, the portable
cassette player, with its deeply resonating
speakers and cool designs, said Nobuyuki
Norimatsu, nicknamed “Aibo doctor,” of
A-Fun, a company of engineers who do
repairs for discontinued electronics goods.
Still, many VCR owners want to dub
their videos on their own, rather than
sending them to outside companies, be-
cause the content is so personal, he said.
Continued on page 6
said they had to wait for nightfall for
privacy.
“We had to cover our noses during rainy
season because of the bad smell,” said field
campaigner Al Amin Akand of the charity
Plan International, which works on
community issues. “We had to work for
years to motivate the villagers.”
Back in 2008, most people in Bormi had
no choice but to use the surrounding
forests to defecate.
“We had to do fierce campaigning,” going
door-to-door for years, said Mohammed
Badal Sarker, chairman of a local village
council. The council even turned children
into whistleblowers — literally.
“We provided schoolchildren with
whistles to alert the villagers. It worked
like magic,” the chairman said. Children
were encouraged to shout slogans like
“Defecating in the open is the enemy of the
PRIVY PUSH. A Bangladeshi boy walks out from
a toilet at a slum in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Through a
dogged campaign to build toilets and educate Bang-
ladeshis about the dangers of open defecation, the
densely populated South Asian nation has managed
to reduce the number of people who defecate in the
open to just one percent of the 166 million population,
according to the government, down from 43 percent
in 2003. (AP Photo/A.M. Ahad)
people” and “No one will marry your
daughter if you do not have a toilet at
home.”
The drive has even sparked a new
industry in household sanitation, with
small businesses cropping up across the
country to sell the components for making
inexpensive latrines. All it takes, they say,
is an investment of $12 to $60 to buy two to
three concrete rings and a concrete pan.
“Now you will not find a home without a
sanitary latrine,” Sarker said.
There is still cause for concern.
Bangladesh’s overpopulated urban areas
are proving to be more of a challenge,
mostly because the opportunity for
contaminating the water supply is much
greater.
“People might be using a toilet or a
latrine, but then where does the human
waste go from there?” said John Sauer,
senior
technical
adviser
of
the
Washington-based Water, Sanitation, and
Hygiene
Population
Services
International (PSI). Wastewater could be
dumped on a field where children play or
where food is grown. “We must address
where the human waste goes and how it is
treated, disposed, or reused.”
Still, Sauer said, the achievement of
virtually eradicating open defecation in
just a decade is astonishing.
“Bangladesh has a lot to teach the rest of
the developing world,” he said.