BORMANN: Its the worlds largest democracy, but equality has never been a part of it. For many Indians putting food on the table is a big enough struggle. Many others are being smothered by their own waste.
But theres another need that seems so basic you cant imagine not taking it for granted.
Each day hundreds of millions of Indians face a very public inconvenience here, when you want to go theres nowhere to go. This is the story of a group of people who call themselves the sanitation warriors. They save thousands of lives each year and give hope to a downtrodden people known as the untouchables.
By any measure Renu Ujjinwal has a job thats desperate and disgusting. Its so bad no one except her family wants to go near her. She cant even go to the temple at her home in the state of Rajasthan, shes shunned in public places. In Indias caste system shes known as an untouchable because of her job collecting sewage from households with no toilets.
RENU UJJINWAL: I fall sick. I have a dry cough. When I am putting dust on the toilet it gets inside me.
BORMANN: Renu empties it into a common drain, the waste becomes the problem of someone else.
SUSHMITA SHEKAR, Sulabh International: These are the people who are supposed to be the lowest of the low. They feel very low mentally and morally and over the years they start believing that they themselves are actually low because they are told day in and day out that they are not meant to do these things which the other people are meant to do.
BORMANN: Renu married at 13 and followed the footsteps of her mother and grandmother collecting the so-called night soil. She fears her own children are destined for the same role in life.
RENU UJJINWAL: My eldest daughter has quit school because she thinks its useless to study when she has to do my job. My younger daughter refuses, and says mummy, I will not do this job.
BORMANN: Its staggering that in a country of one billion people 80 percent dont have a toilet and most in cities and towns arent connected to a sewage system anyway. Thats eight hundred million people going in the open in rivers, under bridges, anywhere they might hope to get some privacy.
This shocking state of sanitation explains alarming rates of sickness here. Each year 40,000 children under the age of 5 die from diarrhoea alone.
And these are the people wanting to save them the so called hygiene missionaries of the Sulabh Sanitation Movement.
The New Delhi based charity is driven by religious like zeal and an objective that one day every Indian should have a toilet.
SUSHMITA SHEKAR, Sulabh International: Its not that this is a poor mans problem, in many places people have the money to build houses but they do not think it necessary to create a toilet or to construct a toilet.
BORMANN: So Sulabh builds toilets for them. Since the 1970s the organisation has constructed more than 2 million of them across India on its crusade to change habits and save lives.
At this crowded neighbourhood in southern New Delhi a community of 2,000 people can head to the toilet for the first time. Its the only communal building they have. But this is more than a public lavatory.
As Sulabhs Doctor PK Jha shows me no waste is wasted.
DR PK JHA: That liquid is treated through a simple technology.
BORMANN: In a parched city the toilet produces water for household gardens.
DR PK JHA: And finally it turns into this form. This liquid is free from any pathogens, any colour, any odour.
BORMANN: Perhaps not too remarkable but theres more. Methane is also collected from the toilet facility and pumped to nearby homes. Its a free source of cooking gas and saves householders like Suresh Devi the expense of having to buy gas cylinders.
SURESH DEVI: People who come here watch how it works and ask me to get it connected to their houses. When theres enough gas, the entire village will be connected.
BORMANN: It was the nations founding father who identified sanitation as Indias greatest challenge. As a gesture of humility, Mahatma Gandhi himself even tried his hand at emptying household buckets.
PARWAN KUMAR JHA, Curator, Sulabh Toilet Museum: Gandhi had said two things first thing is the first person in this world who had said that toilets are temples and then he also emphasised that cleanliness is next to Godliness.
BORMANN: Parwan Kumar Jha takes it seriously too. As curator of Sulabhs toilet museum hes a world expert on the heritage of the water closet.
PARWAN KUMAR JHA: They say in England if you go to there they call it loo, if you go to the USA they call it John, in Australia or New Zealand it is dunny.
BORMANN: The collection catalogues toilet evolution from the 17th Century. This piece is the seat of power for King Louis 14th.
PARWAN KUMAR JHA: It is said that when hes sitting on his throne and talking to his courtiers discussing very important state subjects, if he has the daily call of nature, in the presence of all he lifts it and does it.
BORMANN: The serious message is that this basic human need cant be catered for in India. Most people dont even have access to a simple hole in the ground.
BORMANN: Sulabhs popular twin pit system costs just a few dollars to build. When one hole is filled its left to compost to garden fertiliser while the other side is used.
PARWAN KUMAR JHA: The day you give a clean toilet to a lady she will never go on the road to do this thing.
BORMANN: In the suburbs of New Delhi, Sulabhs Doctor S. Nath conducts sanitation workshops.
Most of these women dropped out of school because they couldnt bear the indignity of having to go to the toilet in the open. Theyre often unruly affairs, mothers are drawn on the promise of free medical help in the centre while their children too are taught about basic hygiene.
Women comprise 95 percent of the sewage collectors of India but their role in the family makes them crucial to the Sulabh experience.
DR S. NATH, Sulabh International: If one man is trained, only one person is trained. If one woman is trained, the whole family is trained. So we lay more importance on training and educating women.
BORMANN: And these are the women whove had their lives completely turned around. Theyve been lifted from the gutter. In Sulabh speak they are liberated women.
SUSHMITA SHEKAR, Sulabh International: Three years back they were carrying human excreta as head loads. So self-grooming, building up the self-confidence, teaching them how to read and write, apart from the vocational training, is an integral part of what were doing.
BORMANN: Now the women have skills that have enabled them to break free from their jobs as toilet carriers. Theyre trained as beauticians and make-up artists.
Other untouchables also have a new income they come together to make pickles and papadum to sell to the local community.
SUSHMITA SHEKAR, Sulabh International: And the most important thing that we wish to achieve through this is to make them feel independent, self-reliant financially and for them to feel confidence in themselves that theyre as good as anybody else.
BORMANN: For liberated untouchable Rani Athwal its been a life changing experience.
RANI ATHWAL: It really felt good to come to work dressed well, sit in a good clean environment . . . sit in the shade. I really liked that. If there were more toilets there would be no requirement to do this scavenging work.
BORMANN: Rani takes me back into her neighbourhood and to the house where she used to work. She explained what was her daily routine fetching the sewage left at the side of the house.
Rani can move on thanks to her new skills but also because of some renovations by her old boss. The addition of a toilet.
This is a country talked about as a future world superpower. It has a burgeoning middle class and business people becoming billionaires out of information technology. India has the bomb, satellites and wants to send spacecraft to the moon.
Can you see a time in India when most people have access to a toilet?
SUSHMITA SHEKAR, Sulabh International: I would love to see it but I do not know whether Ill be alive to see that.
BORMANN: Its a simple enough idea. If you build enough toilets you improve the health of a nation. You also eradicate the need for the untouchables of India to clean up after others and in doing that you return some dignity to a people who for generations have been outcasts of this society.
But theres another need that seems so basic you cant imagine not taking it for granted.
Each day hundreds of millions of Indians face a very public inconvenience here, when you want to go theres nowhere to go. This is the story of a group of people who call themselves the sanitation warriors. They save thousands of lives each year and give hope to a downtrodden people known as the untouchables.
By any measure Renu Ujjinwal has a job thats desperate and disgusting. Its so bad no one except her family wants to go near her. She cant even go to the temple at her home in the state of Rajasthan, shes shunned in public places. In Indias caste system shes known as an untouchable because of her job collecting sewage from households with no toilets.
RENU UJJINWAL: I fall sick. I have a dry cough. When I am putting dust on the toilet it gets inside me.
BORMANN: Renu empties it into a common drain, the waste becomes the problem of someone else.
SUSHMITA SHEKAR, Sulabh International: These are the people who are supposed to be the lowest of the low. They feel very low mentally and morally and over the years they start believing that they themselves are actually low because they are told day in and day out that they are not meant to do these things which the other people are meant to do.
BORMANN: Renu married at 13 and followed the footsteps of her mother and grandmother collecting the so-called night soil. She fears her own children are destined for the same role in life.
RENU UJJINWAL: My eldest daughter has quit school because she thinks its useless to study when she has to do my job. My younger daughter refuses, and says mummy, I will not do this job.
BORMANN: Its staggering that in a country of one billion people 80 percent dont have a toilet and most in cities and towns arent connected to a sewage system anyway. Thats eight hundred million people going in the open in rivers, under bridges, anywhere they might hope to get some privacy.
This shocking state of sanitation explains alarming rates of sickness here. Each year 40,000 children under the age of 5 die from diarrhoea alone.
And these are the people wanting to save them the so called hygiene missionaries of the Sulabh Sanitation Movement.
The New Delhi based charity is driven by religious like zeal and an objective that one day every Indian should have a toilet.
SUSHMITA SHEKAR, Sulabh International: Its not that this is a poor mans problem, in many places people have the money to build houses but they do not think it necessary to create a toilet or to construct a toilet.
BORMANN: So Sulabh builds toilets for them. Since the 1970s the organisation has constructed more than 2 million of them across India on its crusade to change habits and save lives.
At this crowded neighbourhood in southern New Delhi a community of 2,000 people can head to the toilet for the first time. Its the only communal building they have. But this is more than a public lavatory.
As Sulabhs Doctor PK Jha shows me no waste is wasted.
DR PK JHA: That liquid is treated through a simple technology.
BORMANN: In a parched city the toilet produces water for household gardens.
DR PK JHA: And finally it turns into this form. This liquid is free from any pathogens, any colour, any odour.
BORMANN: Perhaps not too remarkable but theres more. Methane is also collected from the toilet facility and pumped to nearby homes. Its a free source of cooking gas and saves householders like Suresh Devi the expense of having to buy gas cylinders.
SURESH DEVI: People who come here watch how it works and ask me to get it connected to their houses. When theres enough gas, the entire village will be connected.
BORMANN: It was the nations founding father who identified sanitation as Indias greatest challenge. As a gesture of humility, Mahatma Gandhi himself even tried his hand at emptying household buckets.
PARWAN KUMAR JHA, Curator, Sulabh Toilet Museum: Gandhi had said two things first thing is the first person in this world who had said that toilets are temples and then he also emphasised that cleanliness is next to Godliness.
BORMANN: Parwan Kumar Jha takes it seriously too. As curator of Sulabhs toilet museum hes a world expert on the heritage of the water closet.
PARWAN KUMAR JHA: They say in England if you go to there they call it loo, if you go to the USA they call it John, in Australia or New Zealand it is dunny.
BORMANN: The collection catalogues toilet evolution from the 17th Century. This piece is the seat of power for King Louis 14th.
PARWAN KUMAR JHA: It is said that when hes sitting on his throne and talking to his courtiers discussing very important state subjects, if he has the daily call of nature, in the presence of all he lifts it and does it.
BORMANN: The serious message is that this basic human need cant be catered for in India. Most people dont even have access to a simple hole in the ground.
BORMANN: Sulabhs popular twin pit system costs just a few dollars to build. When one hole is filled its left to compost to garden fertiliser while the other side is used.
PARWAN KUMAR JHA: The day you give a clean toilet to a lady she will never go on the road to do this thing.
BORMANN: In the suburbs of New Delhi, Sulabhs Doctor S. Nath conducts sanitation workshops.
Most of these women dropped out of school because they couldnt bear the indignity of having to go to the toilet in the open. Theyre often unruly affairs, mothers are drawn on the promise of free medical help in the centre while their children too are taught about basic hygiene.
Women comprise 95 percent of the sewage collectors of India but their role in the family makes them crucial to the Sulabh experience.
DR S. NATH, Sulabh International: If one man is trained, only one person is trained. If one woman is trained, the whole family is trained. So we lay more importance on training and educating women.
BORMANN: And these are the women whove had their lives completely turned around. Theyve been lifted from the gutter. In Sulabh speak they are liberated women.
SUSHMITA SHEKAR, Sulabh International: Three years back they were carrying human excreta as head loads. So self-grooming, building up the self-confidence, teaching them how to read and write, apart from the vocational training, is an integral part of what were doing.
BORMANN: Now the women have skills that have enabled them to break free from their jobs as toilet carriers. Theyre trained as beauticians and make-up artists.
Other untouchables also have a new income they come together to make pickles and papadum to sell to the local community.
SUSHMITA SHEKAR, Sulabh International: And the most important thing that we wish to achieve through this is to make them feel independent, self-reliant financially and for them to feel confidence in themselves that theyre as good as anybody else.
BORMANN: For liberated untouchable Rani Athwal its been a life changing experience.
RANI ATHWAL: It really felt good to come to work dressed well, sit in a good clean environment . . . sit in the shade. I really liked that. If there were more toilets there would be no requirement to do this scavenging work.
BORMANN: Rani takes me back into her neighbourhood and to the house where she used to work. She explained what was her daily routine fetching the sewage left at the side of the house.
Rani can move on thanks to her new skills but also because of some renovations by her old boss. The addition of a toilet.
This is a country talked about as a future world superpower. It has a burgeoning middle class and business people becoming billionaires out of information technology. India has the bomb, satellites and wants to send spacecraft to the moon.
Can you see a time in India when most people have access to a toilet?
SUSHMITA SHEKAR, Sulabh International: I would love to see it but I do not know whether Ill be alive to see that.
BORMANN: Its a simple enough idea. If you build enough toilets you improve the health of a nation. You also eradicate the need for the untouchables of India to clean up after others and in doing that you return some dignity to a people who for generations have been outcasts of this society.