Georgia Tech industrial design professor Abir Mullick is on a mission to bring about a “complete revolution in public bathrooms in India.”
Or you might say Professor Mullick is helping India get its stuff together.
“I’m a part of higher education doing research in India on a social problem,” Mullick told Diverse. “And it happens to be about the toilet.”
For India’s poor and for the sake of sanity in sanitation, Mullick’s planned revolution of the commode cannot come quickly enough.
While the rich and middle class are opting to install porcelain thrones for their homes over the squat toilets that are more commonplace, only about 46 percent of Indians have access to any kind of toilet in the first place, according to Mullick.
“The rest have to look around, and that poses a lot of community health problems,” Mullick said of those without access to toilets. “So where do the other people go? They defecate outside, in the field, by the riverbank.”
Indeed, this writer has observed the situation firsthand during an ongoing month-long trip to India.
Near just about any riverbank in the crowded city of Chennai (4.2 million according to its 2001 census), passers-by immediately will be assailed by an unmistakable stench. Yet, the foul odor is not enough to keep young children from the adjacent slum villages from playing near the perilously sullied rivers.
Walk down any roadside—including some of the busiest thoroughfares—and you’ll see men relieving themselves on trash heaps, trees or cement walls. The practice is not limited to adults. Even in the midst of the hundreds of people waiting on buses at Chennai’s frenetic CMB bus station, for instance, a girl of no more than 4 years old squatted to relieve herself on the pavement of a waiting platform, and no one seemed to think it odd.
One would think that public toilets would be plentiful in a place such as the T. Nagar shopping district of Chennai, where thousands of people jam the streets each day to patronize restaurants, shops and street vendors
The reality is—in T. Nagar as elsewhere throughout the city and the country—public toilets are few and far between, except for maybe at fancy restaurants and hotels.
And even with the toilets that visitors are lucky enough to find, they should not expect to find a flush toilet, but rather a squat toilet.
And instead of toilet paper or soap, only bank on a large bucket and a small cup for water to do whatever needs to be done.
A squat toilet is not an easy thing for the uninitiated to use. If you can’t easily do knee-bends, for instance, you’re in deep, uh, trouble.
And as with anything that calls for aiming a projectile into a narrow and confined space, a little target practice, if you will, goes a long way. It’s no small wonder that insects seem to like these facilities more than people.
“They’re hell on earth,” Mullick says of India’s toilets. “They are dirty, filthy, awful. And even though it’s changing, it’s not changing as much as it’s needed.”
"The need to have access to public toilets is very high,” he adds.
It’s not as if India doesn’t have examples of decent toilets.
Take, for instance, the sleek restrooms inside the Sathyam Cinemas, a multiplex theater located inside Express Avenue Mall, a mega-luxury shopping center that would literally dwarf many malls in America.
In the restrooms at the Sathyam Cinemas, TVs are embedded in the walls opposite the toilets, which are similar to the kind you might find in an international airport.
The urinals are sensor-operated, as are the sinks and hand driers. However, just outside the Express Avenue Mall is an entirely different world—the one that Mullick is trying to change.
Mullick says he is working with the government on implementing a pilot project for his toilets, mostly in Ahmedabad starting in 2012. He plans to return to India this December to plan the next steps.
“I’d be happy if we can do 50,” Mullick said, although he said a senior bureaucrat indicated recently that the government was interested in doing the project on a larger scale.
Mullick says the urgency of the situation transcends providing people with a convenient place to relieve themselves. The current practice, he said, is polluting the whole environment.
“That creates other problems,” he said, such as the contamination of subsoil water.
Each year, for instance, Mullick says 400,000 children in India die from waterborne diseases, such as cholera.
Mullick is guarded about the design of his toilet, which he says hasn’t been published yet because of its potential proprietary value.
“Right now we are exploring the possibility to do a prototype with some very big companies,” he said.
A brief description of the project can be found on the web page that describes his project in India. Among other things, it says that Mullick plans to develop “a universal bathroom” for Indian use.
“Particular emphasis will be placed on public and community bathrooms used by a wide range of users. ... The bathroom will be safe, accessible and usable by all people regardless of their age, sex and disabling conditions.”
Mullick said his bathroom will address the needs of India’s handicapped, particularly polio victims who are often forced to drag themselves around due to lack of wheelchairs.
“In the absence of using wheelchairs, they have a funny way of dragging their bodies on the ground,” Mullick said. “They don’t really use a wheelchair, but they’re crawlers.”
From the website describing Mullick’s project: “The design will empower all people equally—independent users, dependent users and care-providers—though the greatest potential benefactor will be frail individuals and those with disabilities living with families and in newly emerging nursing homes.”
Professor Mullick credits his American education and its emphasis on research with equipping him with the skills necessary to use research to solve the problems of the day.
While he received his Bachelor of Industrial Design degree from the National Institute of Design in India, he earned his graduate degrees in industrial design and city and regional planning from Ohio State University.
Mullick is critical of colleges and universities in India for not doing enough to solve the nation’s problems.
“I think higher education in India is still not focused on research and contextualized problem-solving,” he said.
"The toilet was a case in point. I wanted to work on that. That’s what took me to India, actually,” he said, explaining that he had not been in his native country for 30 years. He just got back from a trip to India in June.
Mullick said he is planning to do more research in India on a full-time basis to help the country as its economy continues to develop.
“I’m inspired to do full-time sociological research in India,” said Mullick, who previously held teaching posts in architecture and industrial design at SUNY Buffalo and Purdue University, respectively.
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