Elections in various countries

[Vijay]

This... This has to be the worst thing about humans.
This is it, right?

Open defecation is worse than killing people outright? I don't think so.

My question is how much of the population of India has running water and sewers, and to me cleaning a toilet is as simple as squirting some cleanser liquid into the toilet then scraping a scrubby thing around it every so often, barely something that one needs to hire a Dalit for. And even when there isn't running water and sewers, a latrine can be simple as an outdoor hut placed over a hole in the ground, and when the hole gets full, the hut is moved somewhere else and the hole is covered over...

There is no cleanser liquid, there is no scrubby thing, and property is limited. 88% of the population has access to at least basic water, but only two Indian cities have continuous running water. 93% of sewage in India found its way to ponds, lakes, and rivers without treatment at least as of 2011.

The thing I don't get is how do they consider defecating outdoors to be less degrading than merely occasionally cleaning their own toilet.

Defecating outdoors is what Indians have always done, so there's traditionally no shame associated with it. It helps fertilize the plants (or at least this is part of the traditional view).

If I understand correctly, you describe Mohandas Gandhi as casteist. Is this correct and what basis would there be for this?

Of course he was casteist. His own son has publicly admitted that he was.

Like I said, he tried to portray himself as if he wasn't casteist. But the reality was that he was extremely patronizing towards low-caste people, including low-caste fellow revolutionaries. He failed to listen to them and their grievances. Earlier, Zompist mentioned Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, the architect of the Constitution of India, independent India's first law and justice minister, a Dalit rights activist and freedom fighter, and a Dalit himself. Ambedkar and Gandhi were deeply opposed, so much so that Ambedkar heavily criticized Gandhi on the BBC and declared that he did not deserve the title "Mahatma." Gandhi was in favor of keeping the caste system despite his supposed opposition to untouchability, and Ambedkar accused him of opposing casteism only when writing in English while writing in favor of it in Gujarati.

[Travis B.]

88% of the population has access to at least basic water, but only two Indian cities have continuous running water. 93% of sewage in India found its way to ponds, lakes, and rivers without treatment at least as of 2011.

My initial thought was how do they not have regular epidemics of cholera in India.

[Vijay]

88% of the population has access to at least basic water, but only two Indian cities have continuous running water. 93% of sewage in India found its way to ponds, lakes, and rivers without treatment at least as of 2011.

My initial thought was how do they not have regular epidemics of cholera in India.

Well, the first cholera pandemic started in one part of India in the early 19^th century, there was an outbreak in 1859, the fourth pandemic started in India in 1863, the fifth started in India towards the end of the century, the sixth killed more than 800,000 Indians around the turn of the century, the seventh reached India in 1964, another outbreak started in India in the 90s, another started in 2007, and the last one occurred seven years ago.

[Salmoneus]

88% of the population has access to at least basic water, but only two Indian cities have continuous running water. 93% of sewage in India found its way to ponds, lakes, and rivers without treatment at least as of 2011.

My initial thought was how do they not have regular epidemics of cholera in India.

....well, they largely resolve that paradox by having regular epidemics of cholera in India.

Researchers reported 68 cholera epidemics in India between 1997 and 2006, and considered even that to likely be an underestimated due to insufficient monitering. And that's on top of endemic cholera in many Indian states in many of those years.

[in total the researchers found over 220,000 case of cholera - though the Indian government claimed only 35,000]

[MacAnDàil]

@Vijay: I tried to find information on his son saying this but to no avail. Do you have the quote or at least which son it was? I was already aware of opposition between Gandhi and Ambedkar on certain issues. As I understand, one of these was the idea of separate electorates for dalits. Ambedkar supported separate electorates, in a similar way that people might support minimum representation for African Americans, while Gandhi opposed separate electorates for dalits in a similar way to which he opposed separate electorates for Hindus and Muslims. Gandhi himself said he did not deserve the title of 'Mahatma' so that's not saying much. What do you understand by the word casteist in any case? On further reading, it would appear that Gandhi wanted to keep a system of castes, but for them to be of equal status. One criticism of this idea is that this is unrealistic, which can also be applied to other ideas Gandhi had about caste.

[zompist]

@Vijay: I tried to find information on his son saying this but to no avail.

This is not a pretty fact about Gandhi, but Vijay is correct. Here's a quote from Gandhi himself, from 1921:

Caste does not allow a person to transgress caste limits in pursuit of his enjoyment. That is the meaning of such caste restrictions as inter-dining and inter-marriage... These being my views I am opposed to all those who are out to destroy the Caste System.

And yes, he was known for downplaying his views. If he met with Dalits, he would refuse to take food, or take it and put it aside. He did one of his fasts to protest the idea of Dalit electorate. (He and Ambedkar compromised on reserved Dalit seats.)

(People often confuse varna (the four Vedic classes plus Dalits) with jati (the thousands of kinship groups). My understanding is that in practical terms it's jati restrictions that are particularly galling and hard to eradicate. Though money has a way of confusing these ancient divisions...)

[Travis B.]

88% of the population has access to at least basic water, but only two Indian cities have continuous running water. 93% of sewage in India found its way to ponds, lakes, and rivers without treatment at least as of 2011.

My initial thought was how do they not have regular epidemics of cholera in India.

....well, they largely resolve that paradox by having regular epidemics of cholera in India.

Researchers reported 68 cholera epidemics in India between 1997 and 2006, and considered even that to likely be an underestimated due to insufficient monitering. And that's on top of endemic cholera in many Indian states in many of those years.

[in total the researchers found over 220,000 case of cholera - though the Indian government claimed only 35,000]

I know about the earlier epidemics of cholera starting out in India, but I somehow was not aware of it being prevalent until now - hell, I was very much aware of the cholera outbreak in Haiti, but was not aware of it being this prevalent in India.

[Vijay]

@Vijay: I tried to find information on his son saying this but to no avail. Do you have the quote or at least which son it was?

I recall it being in a YouTube video, but it seems to have been taken down. Maybe it was a grandson rather than a son, although I thought initially it was Harilal and the clips I've found of his grandchildren so far seem to defend him.

[Moose-tache]

Open defecation is worse than killing people outright? I don't think so.

I was referring more to the fact that we will deliberately ignore ways of making our lives better if they provide us with no opportunity to brutalize each other, because even pooping has to be a test of social dominance. Not sure where the killing part comes from.

[Vijay]

You can't understand open defecation in India without understanding that Indians don't necessarily see a problem with it in the first place. I don't think all that many Indians (even high-caste Indians) realize, or think long and hard enough about it to realize, that open defecation can result in water sources being contaminated. In addition, there are many other reasons why water sources in India are already contaminated anyway (ecologically harmful waste disposal, soil erosion, etc.), so it's not as if ending open defecation in India in and of itself is going to help all that much with providing the people with clean, drinkable water.

[MacAnDàil]

@Vijay: I tried to find information on his son saying this but to no avail.

This is not a pretty fact about Gandhi, but Vijay is correct. Here's a quote from Gandhi himself, from 1921:

Caste does not allow a person to transgress caste limits in pursuit of his enjoyment. That is the meaning of such caste restrictions as inter-dining and inter-marriage... These being my views I am opposed to all those who are out to destroy the Caste System.

And yes, he was known for downplaying his views. If he met with Dalits, he would refuse to take food, or take it and put it aside. He did one of his fasts to protest the idea of Dalit electorate. (He and Ambedkar compromised on reserved Dalit seats.)

(People often confuse varna (the four Vedic classes plus Dalits) with jati (the thousands of kinship groups). My understanding is that in practical terms it's jati restrictions that are particularly galling and hard to eradicate. Though money has a way of confusing these ancient divisions...)

That is certainly not pretty. It is obviously support for strict segregation. On the other hand, it may be an issue on which he changed his mind. He was formerly a supporter of the continued existence of the British Empire, after all.

It's often hard to square a demand for change on one issue with a demand for lack of change on a closely related issue. This appears to be one of those cases.

[zompist]

Americans are squeamish about poop. But that doesn't always mean our methods are better.

problems with cow poop
problems with human poop

Poop is a resource. There's a reason for a premodern tradition of pooping in the fields: it's valuable fertilizer. In medieval China, poop was carefully collected in the cities— making the streets far cleaner than European cities— and used in the countryside.

It's also a disease vector, but to be fair, so was almost everything else. Population was lower, too, and the problem with premodern systems is that they don't scale up indefinitely. Methods that worked OK when India had 100 million people 500 years ago don't work well today.

So, fine, you want people not to poop in the fields. First, what fertilizer do you use instead? Can the farmer afford it; how is it made; what happens when it runs off into the water supply? Second, do you have toilets for everyone, and a sewage system, and sewage treatment plants that can handle a billion people? In the US, we now use chemical fertilizers, which means that the enormous quantity of poop generated by agribusiness is a huge problem rather than a resource.

I don't know what the state of all these things is in India today. There's an enormous transformation going on, so India is a strange mix of the modern and the premodern. E.g., estimates of the middle class vary, but a good estimate is 160 million, which would beat any EU country. At the same time, 50% of the population still works in agriculture.

[Tropylium]

"Not pooping outside" does not have to mean removing it from local circulation entirely, there's also the long-known cluster of farming technologies of first collecting excrement, dung, etc. separately, maybe allowing it to compost for some time, and only then periodically spreading it across fields.

[Vijay]

But for that matter, there are also ways to poop outside that don't harm the environment or poison the water or whatever, and people in some countries make use of that.

In any case, it seems as if the Indian government's approach to the issue of open defecation largely consists of sending people around to villages screaming about how bad it is and mobilizing people to physically attack anyone who does it without actually giving toilets to precisely those people who have no way of getting one. That's how bullshit(!) like this starts happening.

[mèþru]

sending people around to villages screaming about how bad it is and mobilizing people to physically attack anyone who does it without actually [solivng anything]

I'm sensing a pattern in how the BJP resolves issues.

[Vijay]

Well, usually, they don't even bother sending anybody. They just scream at their own TVs at home (or occasionally at a TV station in Mumbai or something).

In other news from India, daily animal sacrifice is now officially banned in Hindu temples in the state of Tripura. I see some Hindus complaining that the judiciary says that it can't handle court cases involving Islam yet even non-Hindus in the judiciary handle court cases that involve Hinduism. EDIT: Meanwhile, the BJP is apparently trying to persuade Muslims not to slaughter animals during Eid al-Adha. Some Muslims have expressed support for this decision.

[Vijay]

The Indian Army is imprisoning kids in Kashmir.
For all the fuss government supporters make about Rahul Gandhi supposedly being corrupt, Modi is involved in a much bigger corruption scandal.
The government has decided to sentence an Indian policeman who tried to stop a religious riot twenty years ago to 30 years in prison, claiming that some of the Hindu extremists involved died in his custody.
Karnataka is flooded. The governor(?) is a BJP supporter and appealed to Modi, who said he would help and then did nothing.
Bihar is also flooded, but the government has been ignoring that altogether. Dozens of people who traveled from other parts of the country to help out complained about the government's inaction, and the government's response has been to brand them as traitors.

[tiramisu]

.

[Travis B.]

Israel: Netanyahu has returned his mandate to Pres. Rivlin, and now Gantz will be tasked with forming a government!

I bet Netanyahu is hoping that Gantz also won't be able to form a government, and there will be a third election within a year.

[Raphael]

Looks like over in Canada, Justin Trudeau got reelected, but without an outright majority. For someone who doesn't know that much about Canadian political traditions, it's interesting that once it became clear who would get how many seats, the CBC announced that there would be a Liberal minority government, as if it would be obvious that the idea of a coalition government is too weird, strange, and outlandish to even consider the possibility.