A toilet meter?

The Hindu, Sunday Magazine, Oct 13, 2013

  

At the panchayat and municipal level, toilet talk is an important issue. Photo: N. Sridharan

As the 2014 elections approach, the media ought to tune in to issues like sanitation, and not spats between politicians.

In the run-up to the crucial 2014 general elections, who would have imagined that the humble toilet would be the object of competitive politics? Yet there it is, bang in the middle of a tussle between Jairam Ramesh, who claims ownership of the concept that toilets are more important than temples, and Narendra Modi, who has borrowed this without so much as a by-your-leave.

Perhaps both camps believe that the way to the aam aadmi’s (and particularlyaurat’s) vote is linked to toilets. And they are not wrong. This column has argued on many occasions that sanitation is a woman’s issue. The absence of toilets is not some statistical game; it is a harsh and terrible reality that millions of women confront every day. Yet, successive governments place sanitation on the bottom of the rung of priorities.

If the vote of women is to count in the next elections, perhaps a “toilet meter” might be useful. How many toilets have Congress governments built in the States where they rule? What about Modi’s Gujarat? How does it measure up on the “toilet meter”?

I came across a fascinating blog (datastories.in) that takes data and turns it into maps that tell a story. Its Toilet Map of India (http://thne.ws/toiletmap) is something on which you can spend hours as you move your cursor through different parts of the country. You see unfolding before you a story, or rather many stories that are waiting to be told.

For instance, I tried to find a place that had 100 per cent households with toilets and I found it! It is Pumao Circle, in Tirap district, Arunachal Pradesh where 64.6 per cent of households had toilets in 2001 but by 2011 every single household had a toilet. How did this happen? That is a story worth investigating. Another place in Arunachal, Migging Circle, Upper Siang, has shown an even more dramatic jump: from 1.3 per cent of households with toilets in 2001 to 96.7 per cent by 2011.

While Pumao Circle is clearly an exception, there are many places across India where over 90 per cent households have toilets. They range from Leh in Ladakh with 90.4 per cent to Hnahthial in Lunglie district, Mizoram with 96.6 per cent to Sadulshahar, Ganganagar district, Rajasthan with 91.5 per cent. All along the western coast of India, starting with the southern part of Maharashtra down to Kerala, the percentages are high. Yet predictably as you go inland and north, towards Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, UP, the percentages are shockingly low. In Sihawai, Sidhi district, MP, only 4.4 per cent households have toilets; in Barhait, Sahibganj district, Jharkhand, only 6.5 per cent; in Pothia, Kishanganj district, Bihar, only 6.7 per cent; in Tarabganj, Gonda district, UP only 8.4 per cent (down from 11 per cent in 2001) and in Kantamai, Baudh district, Orissa, only 3.8 per cent. Even Modi’s Gujarat rarely crosses the halfway point with places like Detroj-Rampur in Ahmedabad district with only 26.2 per cent households having toilets and Nasvadi in Vadodara district with 10.2 per cent.

I dwell on these statistics because that is what the media should discuss rather than the spat between two politicians. Why is so much of India toilet-less? Is it because the ones worst affected are women and they have no voice? Even where toilets are being built, are women being consulted? Or does the man of the house decide where and what type of toilet will be built. Have women any say in location and design? What about community toilets, who looks after them, who controls access, who determines location? Will there be borders and segregation of community toilets?

Toilet talk might not determine the outcome of the 2014 election. But it is becoming increasingly evident that at the panchayat and municipal level, this is an important issue. People, and particularly women, are forming political judgments not just on the basis of caste and community but on the basis of delivery of basic services like water and sanitation. So instead of rhetoric, the political spin-doctors would get a more accurate picture of their chances if they looked at the “toilet meter”. You never know: the humble toilet might yet determine the direction of our politics.

(To read the original, click here)

Taking the stink out of city sanitation

The Hindu, Op-Ed page, June 7, 2012

In South Mumbai's upscale Malabar Hill, a neighbourhood of 6,000 people share 52 toilets, 26 for men and 26 for women. That works out to around 115 people per toilet. Nearby live some of the oldest and richest families of the city with homes where one person may have a choice of many toilets.

But this is Simla Nagar, where 720 households are precariously perched on a not so wealthy slope of Malabar Hill. The path to the two-storey toilet block in the slum is like an obstacle race that only the able can undertake. Depending on which part of the slum you live in, it can take you anything from five to 20 minutes to reach the toilets. On the way you climb steep, uneven steps, walk uphill through narrow lanes barely four feet wide that are slippery with soapy water as scores of women wash clothes and utensils, then downhill through equally treacherous lanes to finally reach the destination.

If you get there before 10 a.m., you are lucky. There is water in the taps; hence the toilets are reasonably clean. If you wait longer, the water stops; you carry your own mug of water, just enough for your personal needs but not enough to flush the toilet. By mid-afternoon, all 52 toilets are rendered unusable. People wait in resignation till the evening when the toilets are cleaned. At night, although the toilets are lit, the path leading to them is not.

Some enterprising people have built their own toilets inside their tiny homes. But there is no sewerage. So the waste pipe dumps the human waste in the open drain outside. If you are the unfortunate neighbour of one of these inventive souls, you live with the stench and the flies and mosquitoes. No one complains. You just curse your luck that you do not have the resources, or the space, to copy your neighbour.

For old people, especially old women, getting to the toilet is virtually impossible unless your jhopdi is next door. And children? Mothers say they use the open drain. Who has the time to drop everything and run with the child to the toilet?

So Bill Gates' idea to launch a global quest to “reinvent the toilet” is certainly timely. India has been given the singular honour of hosting the “Reinventing the toilet” summit in 2013. Very appropriate given over 60 per cent of Indians are forced to defecate in the open because they have no access to toilets. If nothing else, the conference will draw necessary global attention to a problem that is often relegated to the bottom of the endless list of challenges poor countries face.

Innovations needed

Technological innovations are needed as in rural areas, and even in some towns, where capital-intensive underground sewerage systems might not be feasible. Also flush toilets waste too much water and are unsustainable given the growing scarcity of water. But coming up with new ideas for toilets should not be rocket science. As Union Minister for Rural Development Jairam Ramesh stated recently, “We can launch missiles like Agni and satellites but we cannot provide sanitation to our women.”

The real challenge for India is dealing with the sanitation needs of cities and towns, particularly the areas where the urban poor live. Having failed spectacularly all these years to provide affordable housing in cities — Mumbai is now constantly referred to as “Slumbai” — the least governments can do is to put the sanitation challenge within slum settlements top of their list of priorities.

 

In cities like Mumbai, the problem is partly compounded by the carrot of redevelopment that is dangled before many notified or regularised slums such as Simla Nagar. Because they are designated for redevelopment at some future date, not much attention is paid to their immediate needs. As a result, you have toilets that are nowhere near enough for the colony, yet new toilets will not be built. And you have a water supply that comes for just four hours every evening thereby making the hand-flush toilets unusable for a significant part of the day. 

 

Appeals to augment the supply fall on deaf ears. In the end, not out of choice but out of compulsion, many residents of such slums are compelled to defecate in the open at the cost of their own sense of dignity.

There have been efforts, often half-hearted. Funds are allocated but lie unused for years because no one really cares. And the majority of toilet schemes in slums fail for precisely the same reasons: not enough water, zero maintenance and an unresponsive administration.

Even if people come up with innovative ideas, there is little encouragement. Many people from outside government who have tried to intervene in the sanitation sector end up hitting their heads against a brick wall: the unwillingness of much of the bureaucracy to be flexible and open to new ideas, to design adaptations and to the beneficiary community's views. To meet the toilet challenge, it is this mindset that has to be reinvented.

(To read the original, click here)

When girls fear school

The Hindu, Sunday Magazine, December 12, 2010

THE OTHER HALF

KALPANA SHARMA

The reasons for the high drop-out rate of girls are simple: Fear of corporal punishment, sexual abuse and the lack of basic amenities like toilets in schools.

Photo: D. Gopalakrishnan

Pathetic infrastructure...

Sometimes you hear a story, or see a person, and you cannot forget. Last month, I listened to a bespectacled middle-aged woman, dressed in a sari with a scarf tied around her head. She was speaking at a public hearing on “Gender, Equality and Education” in Hyderabad, organised by ASPBAE (Asia South Pacific Association for Basic and Adult Education) and Asmita, a resource centre for women. In a voice choked with emotion, she narrated the tragic story of her 14-year-old daughter, Renuka.

Renuka was a student of AP Social Welfare Society Residential School at Shivareddypet in Ranga Reddy District of Andhra Pradesh. She was in Std V. According to her mother, she was keen to study even though she was older than the rest of the class. On February 21 this year, a girl screaming in her sleep set off panic in the dormitory. The teachers sleeping in the next room, who were in-charge of the hostel, beat the girls to stop them from screaming. Renuka apparently had a head injury and became unconscious. She was admitted to the government hospital and her family was informed. Incensed at what had happened, her brothers questioned the school staff and also spoke to the local press.

When Renuka recovered, her parents brought her back to the school. But the principal and the staff refused to take her back saying she had brought a bad name to the school. The parents continued to make efforts to get her readmitted. But Renuka was so disheartened that she poured kerosene on herself and attempted suicide. With 75 per cent burns, there was little chance of survival. Her distraught mother wants to know what crime her daughter had committed to get such treatment. A case has been registered against the teachers but you wonder how many more cases of corporal punishment are forcing young girls out of school.

Only half the women in India are literate. The government plans to change this drastically in the next two years and has launched Saakshar Bharat, a programme for adult literacy that will focus on women. It aims to raise overall literacy from 64 per cent to 80 per cent and reduce the gender gap between male and female literacy from the current 21 per cent to 10 per cent by 2012.

Root of the problem

But the problem of the low percentage of female literacy lies at the point when a girl, who wants to go to school, drops out. The reasons are often linked to poverty; parents prefer to keep daughters back and send sons to school as girls are more useful at home and at work. But increasingly, even when parents are ready to send their daughters to school, the girls cannot continue because of simple reasons that have nothing to do with the ‘software' of literacy.

There are millions of girls like Renuka who want to learn, but not at the cost of being beaten. Or sexually abused. Several respondents at the public hearing spoke of sexual abuse, particularly in residential schools where tribal children are sent, as a reason for a high dropout rate among girls. This is an aspect of education that needs to be monitored, documented and dealt with. What parent would risk sending a daughter to a school where she is beaten or sexually abused?

The ‘hardware' issue is a much more straightforward problem. Girls drop out of school, particularly when they hit puberty, because there are no toilets. If they exist, they are usually dysfunctional.

Lalithamma from Thamballapalle Mandal in Chittoor District of Andhra Pradesh gave a vivid picture of the absence of toilets and the impact on girls. Her organisation conducted a survey of 80 schools in the mandal. They found that 52 schools had no drinking water facilities and 57 schools had no toilets. Five schools had toilets but without doors or water. Girls were forced to use the open space behind the school. But as boys also accessed the same area, the girls could not go.

Lalithamma said girls sipped water through the day to avoid going to the toilet. Her data from just five schools makes horrific reading:

Thamballapalle High School: 172 girls, two toilets, no water.

Kannemadugu High School: 58 girls, two toilets, no water.

Renumakulapalle High School: 40 girls, one toilet, no water.

Gopidinne High School: 60 girls, two toilets, both not working.

Kosuvaripalle High School: 53 girls, one toilet, no water.

Worst still, these girls return to a hostel at the end of the day where again the toilet facilities are inadequate. They fear going out in the dark and often skip the meal to avoid having to defecate.

This is just a thumbnail sketch of the situation in one mandal in Andhra Pradesh. But it mirrors conditions in most parts of rural India. The situation is not that different in municipal and government schools in urban areas. Girls from such schools in Hyderabad also spoke of the absence of toilets. We want girls to go to school, get through primary school and persist in the higher classes. Yet how can they in such circumstances?

So while the corporal punishment and sexual abuse are issues that need to be investigated closely and documented, a beginning can at least be made by ensuring that there are working toilets for girls in schools. It is such an obvious point that it hardly needs to be made. And yet numerous surveys on girls and education bring out this one need. Why is it not being given as much importance as curriculum, teaching standards, shortage of teachers etc?

(To read the original, click on the link above)

Why public toilets get clogged

The best-designed plans for the building and maintenance of public toilets in India seem to come undone. But the argument that the pay-per-use model popularised by Sulabh is the only workable one is superficial and unrealistic in a country where millions are denied their right to basic services like clean water and sanitation, says Kalpana Sharma On November 19, the front page of a leading Mumbai daily ran an advertisement that announced that it was World Toilet Day.  The ad was blatantly selling a toilet-cleaning agent manufactured by a leading multinational company.  Interesting, nonetheless, that an organisation calling itself the ‘World Toilet Organisation’ should have decided to choose November 19, the birthday of Indira Gandhi, as a day to remember toilets. What we should be remembering on that day is the absence of toilets in large parts of India. Our record on sanitation is still well below par for a country that believes it has already arrived on the world stage as an economic power.  While some strides have been made in rural sanitation through campaigns like the Nirmal Gram Abhiyan, the urban situation remains problematic. With liberalisation has come the belief that many social services like providing sanitation and water can be delivered through public-private partnerships, and that the onus for these services need not be borne by the government alone. The private sector has discovered that there might even be profits in this sector. And NGOs working on sanitation have realised that they can intervene in the design and delivery of sanitation services. For Dr Bindeshwar Pathak, the inventor of the Sulabh Shauchalaya, profit was not the motive that led him to devise the simple “twin-pit pour-flush toilet” that brought about a minor revolution in the availability of toilet facilities in many parts of India. Dr Pathak began in Bihar in the early-1970s, and now heads an organisation that has spread to other countries. Indeed, ‘Sulabh’ has almost become a generic term for a particular kind of toilet. While the Sulabh model has been greatly applauded and has generated substantial revenue for the organisation, not everyone is sold on the idea. Yet, even if there is disagreement on the details, the pay-per-use idea introduced by Dr Pathak has caught on. Every city has tried variations on this theme. The main issue here is how a toilet block can pay for itself so that its operations and maintenance costs can be covered. On paper, this seems workable. Municipalities give the land for such public toilets, including where Sulabhs are built, free, and more often than not, even water and electricity are free or heavily subsidised. While the Sulabh model does not need to be linked to the sewerage network, as it uses septic tanks, similar toilet blocks in other cities, particularly larger ones, are connected to the main sewer lines. So if Sulabh continues to make profits out of its toilets, how is it that other such efforts have not worked quite as well? One reason Sulabh makes profits is because its toilet blocks are usually built in areas with a heavy footfall such as train stations or bus stations or important city junctions. The toilets are heavily used and generate considerable daily revenue. It is estimated that they can cover their construction costs in less than a year. This surplus can then cross-subsidise toilets built in slums where people cannot pay as much and the use is not so heavy. There should have been similar success stories to report in cities where the private sector was initially invited to participate in providing public toilets. But the outcome has been mixed. Take Bangalore for instance. The Karnataka government set up the Bangalore Agenda Task Force (BATF) in 2000 to help garner private involvement in transforming the city. Sudha Murthy, wife of Infosys founder Narayan Murthy, offered Rs 8 crore from her personal funds to construct 100 public toilets in Bangalore. The toilets blocks were called Nirmala toilets and followed Sulabh’s pay-per-use model.  The Corporation would provide the land free; electricity and water too would be free or subsidised. Private companies were contracted to build, run and operate the toilets and hand them over to the municipality after a fixed number of years. The location of the toilets included public places, such as major out-station bus stops, and also slums where the charges would be Rs 20 per family per month rather than pay-per-use. In the initial stages, 27 Nirmala toilets were built with this money at a cost of roughly Rs 10 lakh per toilet block. However, even as the toilets were being built, it was evident that operations and maintenance would be a challenge.  In the following four or five years, the Bangalore Corporation constructed another 50-60 Nirmala toilets. But according to someone involved with the initial concept, the real problem arose when the Corporation decided to drop the user charges and make the toilets free. Within a short time, the inevitable happened. Operators running the toilets lost interest as profits fell. Little was invested in keeping the toilets clean and carrying out timely repairs. As a result, dozens of such toilet blocks are now reportedly virtually unusable.  The Corporation has tried to hand over operations and maintenance to private companies again. But in the interim there has been no real evaluation of why the effort failed and what can be learnt from it. There is no system in place, for instance, for third-party inspection of the toilet blocks. Without regular scrutiny, it is inevitable that standards will slip. Some argue that if the Corporation had allowed private contractors to continue running the toilets by collecting user fees, the public would have been better served. The profits from such a venture are now well established, as is evident from the Sulabh experience. The revenue is virtually tax-free as it is a cash transaction. And ultimately, both the entrepreneur and user benefit. For women, in particular, who have minimal access to safe, clean toilet facilities in most cities, even paying is better than having no toilet at all. There is, however, a class angle. Those with money have secure housing and therefore do not need to worry about public toilets. They can walk with confidence into hotels or shopping malls when they are out, and otherwise have toilets in their homes. For the poor living in informal housing without individual toilets, public toilets are a necessity. If, on top of that, they have to pay each time they use it, the burden becomes heavy. Even if one concludes from the Bangalore experience, and similar ones in other cities, that it is best to keep public facilities on a pay-per-use basis, what do you do about slums where the only toilets available are communal ones usually built by the municipality? The ratio of people to toilets in many slums can be as high as 1:2,500 per toilet seat. User charges in slum toilets -- Rs 20 per family per month -- are clearly not going to generate adequate revenue to cover operations and maintenance. Hence, here, either a cross-subsidy or a direct subsidy is unavoidable. In cities like Mumbai and Pune, the municipality has roped in NGOs working with the urban poor to design, construct and maintain public toilets in slum areas. The funds for these projects are with the municipality, usually lying unused. The private part of the partnership is therefore not in funds, but in execution. Here again the story has been a mixed one. In Pune, for instance, an enthusiastic municipal commissioner encouraged several NGOs, including Shelter Associates and SPARC (Society for Area Resource Centres) to bid for contracts to construct toilets. At first, the outcome was encouraging as these groups consulted communities where the toilets would be built, discussed the design and the location, and encouraged people from the community to be part of the construction process. These consultations spawned several design innovations. For instance, children would continue to defecate in the open even where a toilet was available because the toilet pan was too wide for the child to straddle. As a result, mothers would let their children defecate just outside the toilet block making the approach to the toilet filthy. The groups decided to design a separate children’s toilet. In some slums in Mumbai, where SPARC undertook the work, a community centre was built on top of the toilet block. And the caretaker and his family lived in a room above the block. This ensured that it was kept clean. But even these enthusiastic interventions have not been trouble-free. Some of the problems had to do with the system that operates on the ground. For instance, even if a municipal corporation allows NGOs to bid for the construction of toilets, control of the money lies in the hands of petty bureaucrats. An honest and efficient man at the top does not eliminate the need to grease the palms of middlemen. So, getting funds in time to continue construction, and meeting deadlines, is the first big hurdle that many NGOs face. The other issue is the NGOs’ approach to these contracts; they see them as not just a way of meeting a community need but also of building capacity within the community to carry out such tasks in the future. But in the process of encouraging community-based contractors, there is always the risk of inexperience leading to basic construction flaws that show up within a few years of construction. Ultimately, it is the issue of operations and maintenance that seems to clog even the best-designed toilets. Community management of slum toilets has had its share of problems. In some cases where the group is cohesive and has been engaged in other issues such as savings, for instance, management is better. In others, where a group has been formed to manage the toilet, the results have not been entirely satisfactory. In several places, toilets have been taken over by the local thug or moneylender who charges whatever he pleases and virtually makes the toilet hisadda. The story of public and community toilets in India can be told in several theses and books. In each city, the experiences are specific to the politics and needs of that place. But there are also common experiences from which lessons can be drawn for the future. It would be easy to conclude that just as there is no free lunch, there should be no free toilet facility. That is a superficial and unrealistic conclusion in the Indian context where millions are denied their right to basic services like clean water and sanitation. Ultimately, the only solution to the toilet crisis is the provision of secure housing in which sanitation is an integral part. But until that can be achieved (and currently it seems an almost insurmountable problem), facilities for the poor will have to be subsidised so that they may be spared the indignity that accompanies the lack of sanitation. (To read the original, click on the link above)

Educating India

The Hindu, Sunday Magazine, Jan 24, 2010

The Other Half

The Annual Status of Education Report, 2009, is out… pointing out yet again that what stands between rural girls and a good education is often basic facilities like transport and proper toilets…

Photo: A. Muralitharan

Soldiering on: How long before they are forced to drop out?

Swati and Anita are two young women from rural Maharashtra. They have one thing in common. Both dropped out of school once they completed Standard VIII. They wanted to complete their schooling. Both spoke passionately to me when I met them about their desire to study. Even their parents wanted them to study further. But circumstances would not permit this.

Both girls faced an identical dilemma. While the school up to Standard VIII was in their village or close by, the high school was some distance away. The only way to go there was by the local State Transport bus. While going to school was not such a problem as it was during the day, at the end of the school day, they had to wait several hours before they could catch the bus back. If for some reason the bus was cancelled, and this would happen with alarming frequency, they would have had to walk back to the village in the dark, something their parents would not contemplate. Hence, the only option was to drop out of school. In contrast, the brother of one of the girls faced no such problem. As soon as he was through with his classes, he would hitch a ride on a passing truck and make his way back. This was not an option open to the girls.

Tragic situation

What is tragic is that both these girls are as bright as any you would meet in a city like Mumbai. The only reason they will not become the engineers and doctors of the future is because there is no reliable transport linking their village to the nearest school. And theirs are not remote villages in the interior of Maharashtra. Swati lives a mere hour away from Pune. If this is the story of Swati and Anita, think how many millions more like them must be chafing at being deprived for no other reason than a safe mode of transport.

We also know that many more girls drop out even before Standard VIII for another reason: the lack of toilets in schools. The latest ASER (Annual Status of Education Report) 2009, a comprehensive survey of government and private schools in 575 out of 583 districts in India, revealed that only 50 per cent of government schools have toilets and that four out of 10 government schools did not have separate toilets for girls. Even where there were separate toilets for girls, as many as 12-15 per cent were locked and only 30-40 per cent were “usable”. I visited a school in Bihar where toilets had been constructed but within days their doors had been stolen and the toilet pans smashed making them unusable. If girls dropout when they reach adolescence, it is often for no other reason than the lack of toilet facilities. Even in a city like Mumbai, the dropout rate amongst girls attending municipal schools is markedly higher than that of boys because of the absence of toilets for them.

The annual ASER study, facilitated by the NGO Pratham, is a constant and important reminder of the state of education in this country. In 2009, ASER surveyed 16,000 villages, 300,000 households and 700,000 children. There is nothing on this scale done by an agency outside government, hence its importance. But each year, when ASER results are made public, we are reminded that education is not just about quantity, or the number of children who enrol in school — a number that is increasing — but the quality of the education these children get. And that, although it is getting better in some states, is still shockingly poor.

Conducting simple reading and mathematics tests in schools, the survey reveals that a little over half of all children in Standard V in government schools cannot read a Standard II text book. This means a 10-year-old cannot read what a seven-year-old is supposed to be able to read. What then are these children learning even if they become a statistic showing increased enrolment and attendance in schools?

Disturbing trend

Precious little, it would seem. What they cannot learn in school, they do so by paying for private tuitions. One of the more disturbing statistics in the survey reveals that one in four children in Standard I in private schools is sent for private tuitions as are 17 per cent of Standard I students in government schools. Can you imagine that? Little six-year-olds being sent for private tuition. By the time they reach Standard VIII, over one third try and learn what they are clearly not taught in school through private tutoring. An analysis of the budget of poor people would reveal what a chunk of their earnings goes into such tuitions because they hold on to the belief that education will pull them out of poverty. But given the poor quality of education in these schools, their children will never be able to compete with those with ability to pay for better quality schooling.

Fortunately, not the entire ASER report is gloom and doom. One of the brighter moments in it is the fact that in Bihar, the state considered a basket case on most counts, the dropout rate for girls in the 11-14 age group has reduced from 17.6 per cent in 2006 to 6 per cent in 2009. So Bihar must be doing something right. In fact, one of the striking sights in Bihar today is of girls on bicycles, given by the government if they clear Standard VIII, going to the nearest high school.

The desire to ensure that children get a good education runs deep in most Indian families. Parents will sacrifice and save to invest in their children's future. Even poor families, including the homeless with no secure shelter, find a way of sending their children to school. The increase in the enrolment rate in India — 96 per cent of children between the ages of 6-14 are enrolled in school, government and private — is proof of that.

What urgently needs to be tackled is the quality of education, basic facilities like toilets and running water, and transport, particularly for girls. Even this will not suffice unless there is a notable change in the status accorded teachers who ultimately decide whether and what children learn. Instead of the inordinate amount of attention that continues to be paid to institutes of higher learning, or private institutions that promise to prepare rich children for studies abroad, something much more simple and basic can and needs to be done to educate India and Indians.

(To read the original article, click on the link above)