An Inclusive and Adaptive Community Toilet
in Rural Chattisgarh
In 2018, under Swaccha Bharat Mission’s (SBM) sanitation program, Chhattisgarh was declared “100% open-defecation free”. Despite the government’s effort to construct toilets at the household and community level, it was realized that persons with disabilities (PwD) remained excluded due to their need for specific design, and transgender persons faced stigma, verbal and physical abuse, threatening their safety, privacy and dignity. To address this, a demonstrative pilot program was undertaken by the State SBM (Gramin) in partnership with WaterAid India, UNICEF, and SECL for 100 panchayats of ten districts to bring in accessible inclusive sanitation that could be upscaled to the national level.
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The nuanced perspectives of all allies and stakeholders shaped the project. These included PwD, the transgender community, policy makers, state and district level government departments, sanitation experts, accessibility auditors, rehabilitation engineers, physiotherapists, universal design consultants and the architectural design team. With field visits to study land use patterns, culture and social behaviors, designs were iterated over the period of two years to unanimously arrive at the final model of 3 inclusive and accessible community toilets. These achieve the program’s overarching parameters of universal access and economical construction, stretching further to address the immeasurable challenge of cultural acceptance while supporting flexibility, scalability and resilience for a model intended for use pan-India.
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The design contract terminated with submission of the designs along with a technical construction toolkit drafted to support the existing building knowledge of the labour-force, whether untutored craftsmen of the village or technical masons of the State.
How does the design anticipate user experience and ultimately benefit society?
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The fundamental right to safety, privacy and dignity of marginalized groups is addressed in the planning of the designed community toilets. The model integrates their nuanced needs in tandem with the cultural psyche of society. This directly addresses rudimentary social injustices and violence against them by minimizing their dependency for daily commute, water collection, defecation and other everyday essentials, fostering a sense of inclusion and identity ultimately needed for a continued life of integrity.
How is the design original and innovative in thinking and execution?
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The village community can choose and alter any of the three designed toilets based on their budget, location and number of users. The ‘coop’ unisex toilet fits in a busy area, where the crowd’s hyper vigilance forms its security layer. The ‘yin-yang’ toilet is suited for farm nodes and religious areas, where groups of people desire a restful pause together. The ‘honeycomb’ toilet creates tiny centers of village life along its undulating forms in a residential cluster. Further each toilet has a care taker unit that doubles as a utility shop, ensuring economic sustainability and maintenance of the toilet.
How does the design intrigue and compel in concept and in execution?
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The designs allow a capacity to work with constraints. Construction possibilities are not limited to skilled labour, nor do they assume uniform material availability in a diverse geographical region. Each toilet can be interpreted in a variety of appearances of structural and surface material combinations, while staying true to its core design of spatial quality, light, ventilation and degree of privacy. A given toilet might be built by indigenous builders with accessible natural materials of the village, while the same toilet will likely be built by government trained masons using concrete blocks and steel sections in a semi-urban setting.
How does the design bring happiness to all?
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The basic right to access and relieve oneself safely and comfortably is the starting point of this community toilet building project. Yet it is beyond
the basic, in the sense that the project strives for a sense of ownership to an intimate communal space by harnessing the spontaneous, practical knowledge of the community. The design model places trust in an untapped source of native building on a large scale. The resulting space is enriched by a taste of diversity and humaneness, eventually allowing it to become a part of the village by embracing all life around it.
