It stinks: Chennai's struggle with maintaining public toilets is baffling

Chennai may be cosmopolitan every which way — except when it comes to public toilets.

The Tamil Nadu capital boasts of plenty of public parks, play areas, and gyms constructed by local bodies. But it has a very poor record vis-a-vis public toilets. With a population of over 7 million, Chennai has fewer than 1,000 public toilets, many of which are seen to be highly unhygienic. 

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Tamil Nadu ranked fifth in the Swachh Bharat Mission’s all-India ranking on public toilets in 2022. The state Municipal Administration Ministry has said it will revamp the public toilet infrastructure with a new set of 372 toilets through a public-private partnership at a cost of ₹430 crore.

Engagement of private players

The ministry has pledged to standardise practices and improve the condition of public toilets by making it mandatory for the licensed private player to maintain it for eight years.

The city is well capable of having good public toilets. Take Besant Nagar beach. While it has private pay-and-use toilets, it also has those maintained by the Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM), which are clean and hygienic. 

But the associations working for sanitation workers claim the Municipal Administration Ministry and the Chennai Corporation have concluded that private players alone can provide safe and hygienic public toilets without addressing core issues faced by the existing ones.

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Sanitation workers, who risk their lives working in dirty toilets, get blamed for government apathy, said P Srinivasalu, president of the CITU-affiliated Sengodi Union, which represents sanitation workers in Tamil Nadu.

Poor water supply 

The problem often is poor availability of water. The state has always had water deficit issues, and this reflects on the public restrooms.

“Lack of water supply, non-distribution of cleaning materials like phenol apart from other equipment and political intervention are the reasons for poor maintenance of public toilets in Chennai,” Srinivasalu told The Federal.

“The sanitation worker is expected to clean a whole toilet with a single bucket of water. The government or corporation won’t allocate enough funds or supply enough things to keep the toilets clean and hygienic, yet they will spend crores of rupees on private players,” he complained.

CITU claims many toilets in Chennai which are locked or out of use are those handled by private players. “Without resolving any of these problems, the government is rushing into another private venture,” said Srinivasulu.

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The Federal sent queries to the Ministry of Municipal Administration and Chennai Corporation over the allegations. There was no response till the time of publication of this article. 

Cultural, social norms

Cultural and social norms get in the way, too. With the exception of royalty, the concept of toilets being part of the household or in the near vicinity was alien and repulsive for the common folk of Tamil Nadu, said historian Vinod Vincent Rajesh, who teaches history in the Manonmaniam Sundaranar University, Tirunelveli.

“Large sections of the society thought it abhorrent to have a toilet inside or near their home till recent times. But the Kanyakumari Padmanabhapuram palace, built in 1744, has a separate enclosure for public convenience, which shows how the royals and mighty might have used such facilities.

“First, it was the Vijayanagara empire which brought in the change, in the 16th century. The Nayaka kings of the empire brought along with them a community to do manual scavenging as part of their pursuits into Tamil Nadu. Later on, with the influence of the Portuguese and French, a place of convenience became a part of the home,” he said.

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Anandarangam Pillai, known for the private diaries he wrote as a clerk in the French East India Company, has written notes on such influences. “But locals were always averse to having them close to the house. That’s why the ‘attached bathroom’ concept made a late entry into Tamil society,” Rajesh said.

Men and women

The lack of public toilets creates inappropriate behaviour. Peeing in public is a common sight even in the heart of the city. 

While men may have a social ‘sanction’ in India to pee in public, it is not so for women. This forces them to use public toilets, whether it is clean or not, leading to infections. Else, they are forced to hold back urine, which can again have serious health consequences.

The Tamil Nadu government has been conducting awareness campaigns for decades, yet “corners of convenience” persist. The bustling Chennai shopping hub T Nagar doesn’t have any functional public toilets. Posh locations like Nungambakkam have mobile toilets, but hygiene and usage are a question.

Chennai is not the only Indian city to suffer from the problem of inadequate or poorly maintained toilets. What is surprising is that the problem persists in a city that is otherwise well advanced in terms of public infrastructure — be it roads, metro rail, libraries or healthcare facilities.