SitOrSquat: Cheeta Camp

July 24, 2012 10:46 AM

Mapping Toilets in a Mumbai Slum. As part of an initiative by the Harvard School of Public Health, a team of students is researching life in the Mumbai slum, Cheeta Camp. They started by studying sanitation and water use. Their results? This map of toilets.
posted by bluefly (8 comments total)

I can see my toilet from there! (Ha ha so funny)

Bonus: who will be first to use the term "third-world"?
posted by clvrmnky at 11:12 AM on July 24, 2012

If anyone else is wondering, the BMC referred to in the map is the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai, popularly known as the Bruhanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC).
posted by zamboni at 11:53 AM on July 24, 2012

Many of the 'active' open toilets appear not to have a water supply. Do they have sewer connections? Or is the soil collected for agriculture/dumping in the sea?
posted by alasdair at 12:27 PM on July 24, 2012

Wow, some of those sectors look incredibly densely populated on that map, yet only have two or three toilets. Unfathomable.
posted by slogger at 12:45 PM on July 24, 2012 [1 favorite]

India may well have been the first place on Earth where humans developed good plumbing. The Dravidian culture had giant and well designed public baths. It's especially depressing to see the lack of even toilets, nevermind clean running water given the history of the place.

And, as with so many things, the problem is in many ways worse for women than for men.
posted by sotonohito at 1:49 PM on July 24, 2012

Bonus: who will be first to use the term "third-world"?

clvrmnky at 11:12 AM on July 24
posted by Renoroc at 4:50 PM on July 24, 2012 [2 favorites]

Do you ever read about something so far from your personal experiences that you can't get your head around it? Yeah, this. A thousand times this.
posted by Canageek at 6:00 PM on July 24, 2012 [1 favorite]

Australia has one of these!

http://www.wheresthebloodydunny.gov.au
posted by obiwanwasabi at 1:59 AM on July 25, 2012