Toilets Needed: too few, too filthy
at Farmers Protest Sites
In December 2020, there were over 10,000 protesting farmers camping at the Tikri Border, and over 18,000 at the Singhu border in Delhi. Their numbers grew constantly, as the resistance was long and arduous. Sanitation was a major unsolved challenge, which put the farmers, especially women and senior citizens, at increased health and safety risk amidst the pandemic. Hence, installation of safe, comfortable and accessible toilets became an urgent humanitarian and social justice need.
BasicShit's initiatives at the protest sites were supported by various new channels and organizations. They really helped us grow the number of units that we were able to install, enabling us to provide better sanitation facilities to the protesters on site. Their reach helped us grow our crowdfunding platform, and connected us to a number of people that wanted to take a part in this initiative.
Source: Lallantop
Source: Quint
After successfully installing a few toilets at the Singhu border, BasicShit went to cover both the protest sites.
Laks of men protesting and farmers fought, while the sanitation facilities available to them, municipality toilets, were in such poor condition that people avoided using them. So, we thought of a simpler and more economic design for men's toilets.
This DIY toilet was made up of oil canisters, collected from the Langar sites where users dump the canisters as trash after use. So, we tried to take their trash and craft it as a toilet unit.
At the same time, our team set up camp at the Singhu site itself and started a DIY workshop to create urinals from materials sourced at the protest sites. A design using tin oil cans was finalised by incorporating the inputs of the farmers, and the production was done on site. The initiative generated a lot of interest and we received support from the farmers who dug up pits in the ground, helped with production, and gave constant feedback on how to improve our designs.
Mr Ghassa Singh is an artist full of life who, among other things, can dig a pit up to 10 feet deep.
"I start working when the sun rise and works until the sun set" said Singh.
We collaborated with him to install more toilets at protest sites. His skill in digging a pit is crazy impressive.
