We as a nation are really a basket case when it comes to public facilities’. Our homes are clean and well kept and anything the outside it, is not our responsibility or concern. Take for instance our attitude towards toilets. With the “incredible India” wave, we have high end designer sanitary fixtures and bathrooms accessories available in the market but our public facility continue to be these wet, smelly, slippery and grimy holes in the walls.

We all dread the moment when we are forced to use these places, pulling up our clothes to reduce contact surface, pinching our noses and mincing through the “public facility” to quickly do our business and get out after adding our leavings to general organic abundance that is already there.

The airport in New Delhi renovated the toilets just about a year ago installing, well designed cubicles, non-slip floors and dual flushing options. But people still left their excretion un-flushed for the next user’s pleasure and the cubicles had the floors littered with used toilet paper and sanitary napkins. In Bangalore airport I have had the experience of walking into the ladies toilet where one was under repair with a backed up system, the next occupied and the last one had a woman of upper middle demeanour squatting on the threshold of the cubicle urinating down the floor. When she was tying up her “salvar” to leave I asked, if she intended to clean up after herself and I got a “mind your own business” barked at me, and with that she stalked out morally affronted at the toilet cleaning suggestion.

Till we make our public toilets “our business” we will continue be able to locate the railway stations, bus terminals and airports by following the GPS of urine smell across any city of this country. When you see mothers asking their children to squat besides the toilet bowl to do their business and then do the same, you realise the toilet training is an area of education that our country neglects. We seem to be just about “functionally toilet trained” like the functionally literate who can sign their name and count out change in a primary financial transaction.

 In most of our homes the toilet is still an area where only the household help does the maintenance work. Water is splashed, wetness is spread and a brisk swipe with a stick broom is wielded and voila! The toilet is clean. The constant layer of humidity on the floor and walls with the bacterial bloom in unventilated spaces with closed windows due our prudish nature leads to the layers of grime and encrustation build up but this mess must be invisible to us from the way we ignore it.

Maybe we need to introduce “toilet training” along with algebra and geography as a part of the academic curriculum in our primary schools, to train the children how to use a toilet, what is to be done after you have used it? What is the toilet etiquette in a public facility? Why one needs to cultivate a sense of ownership towards public spaces and facility? How using a public toilet need not be a trauma if everyone makes sure that – “if you leave the space as you would like to find it then this country would be better place”. Maybe this could help towards changing our country’s public facilities from a “pay and abuse facility” to non-traumatic experience when answering the nature’s call.

Reason I am suggesting that we start this with the children in primary schools is, because toilet training an adult seems near impossible.  We have anti- litter laws and noise pollution control legislation has the fear of enforcement with fines or punishment deterred any of our citizens? Have you visited any city in the last 3 years that does not have public address systems blaring every few blocks and litter choked sidewalks, if sidewalks exist, that is?

We need to make a socio-cultural change in our way of viewing our public facilities and where best to start but with our marks driven education system? Only if you have 85% marks in your toilet use and maintenance course, will you be admitted into the universities and higher education centres. Maybe this is the only way that in a generation we would have a toilet trained nation and what an “incredible India” that would be.