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Mumbai's 6.7 million slum dwellers, for whom toilets are seen as a luxury, are ushering in a quiet sanitation revolution. They are building, planning and managing their own community toilets, in a 2 billion rupee (US$ 40 million) project supported by a World Bank loan to the federal government. The project covers around a quarter of the slums. All agree it could become a turning point in the city's development.
In the Ganesh Murthy Nagar slum in the Colaba district, women have taken the initiative to form a society for managing their two-storey toilet block, now under construction. According to Padma Adhikari, a member of the community, "We had one small, smelly toilet for a population of 10 000. Women suffered the most because they had to relieve themselves in the open, and could do so only in the early mornings or after dark."
Slum societies have appointed caretakers, who will live with their families in an airy room on the second storey. The room extends onto a terrace, which holds a huge water tank, and even provides space for community meetings.
Across Mumbai, shanty dwellers are enthusiastically demanding these new toilets, and are taking responsibility for building and managing them. A visit to some of these slums revealed a remarkable change in attitude on the part both of the residents and of the civic authorities.
Gautam Chatterjee, a commissioner of the Brihan Mumbai Corporation (BMC), said "This effort seeks to resolve the fractured development of Mumbai which has been skewed in favour of the formal...