Need to Pee? Go to South Delhi!

That's true. If you need to relieve yourself in a respectable manner in a public space there is no respite but to be in South Delhi. or alternatively put only people in South Delhi have the right to relieve themselves in a respectable and hygienic manner. And it is only people in South Delhi who have the right to be spared the pleasure of witnessing others relieve themselves in full public view.

Over the last few years the Municipal Corporation of Delhi has come up with 'Pay and Use' toilets in the city - public toilets which are, for a change, clean. But unfortunately such toilets are only restricted to the elite confines of South Delhi and Lutyen's Delhi (the official hub of central Delhi).

It is not that there are no public loos elsewhere in Delhi. But they are a world's contrast to each other.

While the ones in South Delhi are well designed, well maintained and sport swanky glow signs the ones elsewhere (here is a picture of one in Old Delhi) leave little to imagination.


The South Delhi ones are decorated with suggestive signs indicating men's and women's rooms; are almost stenchless, have running water, if you are lucky they may also have liquid soap and a automatic hand dryer as well!

But their poorer cousins in the less fortunate parts of Delhi, make themselves conspicuous to the olfactory senses if not to the ocular ones.

A point, however, needs to be noted - it is only the swanky loos that recognise that women also need to and have a right to relieve themselves while on the move. But warped patriarchal attitudes fail not to chase them here as well - the 'Pay and Use' charges Re.1 for urinal and Rs.2 for latrine. But since, biologically, women have to visit the same closet for both kinds of excretion the 'men' at the counter seek to charge them 'Rs.2' irrespective of the kind of usage - thus, daring the women to argue in public with a 'man' that she had been to the closet for urinating and not for shitting!

The other point which needs to be noted, however, larger parts of the city actually have to do with out any kind of public toilet - whether swanky or run-down. The convenience of the 'jhari' or the bush, or the not so secluded rubbish dump is for everyone to 'Find and Use'.

The question ultimately is of the nature of development and the politics behind development which a modern city like New Delhi witnesses. Where there are, clearly, different benchmarks and standards of sanitation and civic infrastructure based on the class composition of different localities.