India Stock market update April 09

I had mentioned about 5 months ago that I have started entering the
Indian stock markets again. I have made investments progressively over this period in small quantities every month.

As of yesterday, Some holdings have shown negative , some as high as 250% . my porftolio shows a 50% profit in this depressed market overall.I am exiting the market again this week, and will wait till the elections are over. By then we will also get a confirmation on whether this "turnaround" is for real or not. If, by then the market has gone up another 10 ro 20%, so it be, but I want to
play it safe, since I already have 50% in my pocket.

This is the first time I am experimenting with this "slow and steady" investment
model, over an extended period, and it seems to work well.

For those of you who intend entering the market, but have not done so yet, my
suggestions would be:


1. If you are going directly to the market through online trading or your
broker, buy select scrips in small quantities- remember, this should be with a 3
to 5 year horizon at the least.

2. Fix a target of return that you would desire, and do not get greedy- just
pull your hard earned money out before the hell breaks loose again. You can
choose to leave the Profits portion only, till as long as you want.

3. In terms of timing, you can continue to buy in small quantities,
notwithsantding the ups and downs in the market. The other alternative is to
wait for the election results to be out. If it is a hung parilament, then
chances are that the market could crash by 5 to 10% on the day the results are
out, and that would be the ideal day to BUY. Keep you money ready for that day,
if you do believe that it will be a hung parliament.

4. If you are buying Mutual funds, keep buying in small quantities in select
funds only. Don't spread too thin. Look for funds with the best historical
returns, and don't bother too much on annual charges as long as performance is
good. The other approach would be, if you have money earmarked for retirement,
then wait for a market correction, and put in the money in big chunks and forget
it for the short/ medium term. Analyze the Fund Manager's pedigree before you
jump in. Remember - any mutual fund is only as good as the individual fund
manager. I personally prefer Sanjay Duggal of HSBC India Growth Fund.

5. In the climate, gold could be a good long term investment, given, the
impending Dollar collapse, so if you planning for buying jewellery for your
family, then I would suggest waiting a bit for gold to correct ( I think Gold is
overbought, technically) and then put some of your money to keep your family
happy!!

The "Night Watchman"

Finally, the inevitable is happening. The "night watchman" is getting ready to hand over the crease to the regular batsman... and the batswoman has also now come out openly and has said that she may well pad up, too!!

Singh endorses Rahul as PM






Dharmendra Jore, Hindustan Times
Mumbai, April 14, 2009
First Published: 02:32 IST(14/4/2009)
Last Updated: 02:33 IST(14/4/2009)




Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, the Congress’ prime ministerial candidate in the Lok Sabha polls, said on Monday that Rahul Gandhi was fit for the country’s top job. His statement comes a day after Rahul’s sister Priyanka Vadra said she wanted her brother to become the prime minister one day.

“Power must pass on to young politicians and Rahul has all qualities and abilities to be the prime minister,” Singh said at a press conference during his one-day visit to Mumbai.

He also lambasted BJP’s PM-aspirant LK Advani, saying he had “the unique ability to combine strength in speech with weakness in action”.

Polity and decency

It is saddening to see the moral denigration of the politicians in the country with elections knocking on our doors. The last remnants of decency and decorum have been dissolved on the banks of the Ganga. Be it Varun Gandhi's "hate speech", Lalu's " I will kill him under a roller" threat, Rabri Devi's derogatory comments on Nitish Kumar, Rahul Gandhi calling Advani a "liar" , not to mention all the "below the belt" comments flying around in Tamil Nadu ... all have gone to show that we have lost our sense of public decency and probity. So much so for a nation which prides itself on "culture", "values", "respect for elders" etc.... shame on us! Dilip

Frauds in the US and corrective actions

 I certainly do not say that America is a special embodiment of badness... to me, it is just another nation with it’s pluses and minuses. Some see the pluses outweighing the minuses, and some like me, see the other way, that is all. For people landing up straight in the USA after India, and virtually settling down there, America is the best place on earth. But for those who have lived elsewhere before or after living in America, that place is just another place, maybe better or worse than their other country experiences, depending upoin where they have lived. And for me, who has been travelling to so many countries over the last 15 years or so, America is still one of the better countries, but clearly there is no halo around it’s back, as far as I can see.

To me, the politicians are the same everywhere, including the USA.  They all try to make money wherever possible, with varying degrees of probity. The Americans by and large seem to firmly believe in the 11^th commandment “THOU SHALT NOT GET CAUGHT”.   That is all...

1. 1.       Did the US Govt not know before that money was being channelized into Swiss banks, ever before? SO what were these people doing all along, without asking for the details? Becuase, they are now cornered.
   
2. 2.       Did the SEC and Fed not know the over-leveraging through exotic financial risks and the dangers they posed? Read the book “GREENSPAN’S FRAUD” by our own Ravi Batra if you have any doubts on why the US Govt kept quiet all along in spite of knowing all these wrong-doings.  http://www.amazon.com/Greenspans-Fraud-Decades-Policies-Undermined/dp/1403968594   .   The fact is, the Govt is now cornered, and are posing as if they want to bring in some semblance of order. If you want to believe in them, it is your call.
   
3. 3.       Did the SEC not know the consequences of shorting Banking stocks, a la Bear Stearns? Then why did they allow a run on the bank stocks right till the end of the year, save for one brief 15 days in between? After they were caught. They clamped down on it, with partial success.
   
4. 4.       Similarly, does the US Govt not know the dangers of funding short term cash requirements with long term debts like 30 year T-Bills? Of course they do. So then why are they continuing it?  You can answer it for yourself.
   

 

Nett of it, they continue to do all wrong, knowing the fall-outs fully well, until the hell breaks loose. And then they take corrective action. Much like the policeman, who knows the dangers of not patrolling the area properly, resulting in thieves coming in. And then the policeman taking action to catch him...   if you want to repose your faith in this policeman, you are free to do so.

Talk about patriotism – you should visit countries like Korea, Japan and China, they are a lot more patriotic than the Americans. The Japanese actually demonstrate it. Of late, you can see many goods Made in China in Japanese stores, but I am told by my local friends that they don’t sell well enough, and that the Japanese prefer locally made goods. It may well be a combination of stringent quality requirements of the Japs, as well as a liberal dose of patriotism. On the other hand, I wonder how many Americans will stop buying cheap Chinese goods from WalMart, and switch over to USA-made goods ( if at all there is anything left), in the name of patriotism...   I would love to see sales of goods from outside dwindle in the USA, before affirming the patriotism at the individual level.

 

The trouble with the Americans in general is, they really do not have much stakes on the ground, both historically and in the present. To me, the Americans are relatively more polite than, say Europeans, because they never had to bear the brunt of foreign influence, culturally or through invasions.  They seem to be more patriotic because their patriotism has never been seriously tested before... this economica downturn is a good chance, and let us how many of them raise in unison against foreign goods and adopt locally manufactured goods.

Historically, the Americans have never been invaded by anyone in any significant way – neither by the Mexicans nor by the Canadians...  the closest was the Pearl Harbour episode... or, you can say, the 9/11 episode...   hence they found it expedient to have a nice big defence industry, and supply arms to all warring countries in the world, and quite often indulging in moral policing of the world. On the contrary, the Europeans have fought war after war amongst themselves through the Renaissance period, right up to the Georgian war last year. History will prove this...this naturally makes them more pugnacious. No wonder Europeans, especially the continental variety, are considered more impolite.  Incidentally the same is the case with South India... we Southies pride ourselves in being a Sadhvik society unlike the North where people are seen as uncouth and rough....   bear in mind that the Jats, the Punjabis, the Rajputs etc have borne the brunt of 1000s of years of invasion starting from Alexander in the BC period, right up to Kasab on 26/11 ....  whereas the Southies have had relatively long periods of peace.

 

Having said all this, I agree with you the once caught, the US does take swift and affirmative action ( eg. Bernie Madoff) or Enron... whereas in India, the laws are so damn shallow that anyone can get away with it... I am amused that Shibu Soren continues to be a Central minister inspite of the whole world knowing that he is a criminal, simply because the provisions of the law have been used to manipulate the evidences and get him out comfortably.

Let me also make a controversial statement here. At the risk of getting beaten up, I would venture to say that the birth of India on Aug 15^th 1947 was based on corruption.  We paid for peace of India, by splitting ourselves, and creating Pakistan from out of us.    We even strike deals with God, none lesser. We quite often pray “ God, give me this, and I will offer you xyz as Neivedhyam or Nerthi Kadan” !!! As if God is waiting to strike this deal with us !!!!     It is in the culture...   today the Indians, especially the Hindus who pride so much in their rich past, are prepared to compromise on anything for the sake of materialism.  We keep harping on our rich past and do not realize that in today’s context of the world we are a nobody.

To me, the Indian society of today is surely on a path of degeneration and decandence, and if we don’t mend our ways quickly enough, we will go the way of Chinese – economically successfully but socially doomed!!!

Dialgoues people speak

riyanka Vadhera has critized Varun Gandhi for making "inflammatory" speech. Fair enough. But what takes the cake is her advice to him. "I would advise him to read the Gita properly and try to understand it," said Priyanka, on a two-day tour of the district to campaign for her mother and brother Rahul, who represents Amethi constituency. I am sure she is an expert in the Gita. She surely should know. For, I am betting my last rupee that she had read the Gita 10 times over, before she made that surreptitious trip to Vellore, bending all jail rules in the process. She took the liberty of pardoning the perpetrators of murder in the May 1991 incident, where along with Rajiv Gandhi, 38 policemen and others were killed. The family of those 38 have been orphaned, and she took their side to pardon the guilty on their behalf... great deed!! May this is what the Gita has said - pardon the guilty on behalf of others, never mind even if they are vehemently opposed to it. As far as I know, the Gita says that people on the side of adharma deserve no pity or mercy and be dealth with accordingly... or maybe I have got the Gita totally wrong, and madam Priyanka has done well with this advice!!! Maybe she was swayed by how the congress party leaders fawn upon Madame Sonia Antonio Maiyo. The age old Congressmen are quite literally following stanza 14 of Chapter 9 when they worship Sonia. This stanza says, and I quote " Always Glorifying me, firm in vows, propstrating before me, and always steadfast, they worship me with devotion" !!!! Maybe Priyanka has grown up seeing this happening within the congress party . Indeed, the Gita can be applied to today's politics as well, and thank you Madame Priyanka, for enlightening me on this!!! Cheers... Dilip

Varun Gandhi

Varuna is the Rain god in Hinduism, and , going by what the media proclaims, Varun Gandhi apparently is "raining" hatred at the moment. 

I firmly believe that there is no smoke without fire. Here is a possible list of causes for this most recent "outburst"..  these are purely speculative in nature. No one really knows the true cause, but it could well be one or more of these.

1. Varun is pitching himself to take advantage of the fact that after Advani there is no one at the national stage to grab the leadership fo the BJP. The fact that he happens to be from the "Gandhi" brand may help him... (remember, there is hell a lot of opposition within the BJP for Modi, notwithstanding his stature in Gujarat and I can't think of any other national contendor within the BJP at present.)   This may be Varun's personal calculation to pitchfork into national limelight overnight.  This strategy ahs been tried and tested in the past - people like Advani and Modi have catapulted into focus using such emotive issues.
2. Varun's calculation may well be that this round of elections may see a hung parliament, leading to elections again in a few months... by which time he may be out of jail, if at all he is thown in, in time for fighting out the next round more effectively. Much like Vaiko's recent rhetoric on the Tamil's issue yesterday.
3. The other possibility may be that he has the blessings of the BJP leadership- more like the BJP shooting from his shoulders.. at the moment, the BJP leadership and party are in tatters when it comes to election preparedness, and this may well end up being a unifieid force. The BJP may need a "new face" to restart the rhetoric, and Varun's ambitions may have fit in the bill well.
4. The BJP may be trying to use Varun as a countervailing force for Modi's rise - typical Indira-Gandhi- style politics.
5. This may be a ploy of the RSS - use Varun;s ambitions to send a message to Advani that the "ram" cause cannot simply be buried under the carpet.
6. The BJP may genuinely be looking for a "unifying" casue other than Rama temple, which is, by now a stale issue in electoral politics, to get all the fringe groups fight together. The use of Varun for this purpose will also, incidentally, help them dent the "family hegemony" of the Gandhi family, notably the rise of the Gen-next Gandhi, Rahul.

The whole election scene right now is a merry go-round. The UPA and NDA have become UP and ND - the A (Alliances) has broken down completely for both of them. The third front is an aggloemeration of partieis who were fighting each other rabidly, till two months back. And today we get the news of the rise of a 4th front (!!)  consisting of Lallu, Mullu and Paswan....

How all these Netas of the four combos will use people's immiment fractured verdict to horse-trade and get the best biz proposition from the Cauldron, remains to be seen.

Whatever it is, the god Varuna is also the master of law and the Oceans...   Varun shurely must be hoping for a political Tsunami !!

Indian economy is losing it's sheen

Looks like the West is unlikely to reap anything significant from the Indian markets and economy- at least not in the near term. It does appear that the Indian Elephant is suddenly defecating right in the middle of the road!!!! Such stories are symptomatic of faily-tale love stories gone sour - maybe the West has not more left to benefit from the Indian Maharajas. When that happens, even the smallest of things look as big as the 100,000 tonnes of excreta being mentioned here, alongside the Taj, of course... After reading the article one is left wondering where this "mountainous" problem ( pun intended) suddenly cropped from. Is this yet another Big Bang theory- in the beginning there was nothing and suddenly there is everything -?? And look at the dramatization- a woman defecating right in the view of the Taj !!! Wow, this is what I call 3D effect.... thank God , there is no 4D on the internet yet!!! I have always heard of many people getting Doctorates in US Universities for really fancy works, but nothing to beat this pile of shit of Taj proportions - I mean , literally!!! I wonder how they estimated the 100,000 tonnes, and more interestingly, how they measured WHERE the droppings happened ... pretty intestinal work, this !!!! I suggest that much like the the McNumber - cost of a burger in McDonald's in different countries forming the benchmark price index- we too can create our own DF Index ( defecating Index)... the more frequent and the bigger the number mentioned in the Western media, the less appealing India is, to the West, and vice versa! Read on....  

 

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=aErNiP_V4RLc&refer=home 

India Failing to Control Open Defecation Blunts Nation’s Growth Email | Print | A A A By Jason Gale March 4 (Bloomberg) -- Until May 2007, Meera Devi rose before dawn each day and walked a half mile to a vegetable patch outside the village of Kachpura to find a secluded place. Dodging leering men and stick-wielding farmers and avoiding spots that her neighbors had soiled, the mother of three pulled up her sari and defecated with the Taj Mahal in plain view. With that act, she added to the estimated 100,000 tons of human excrement that Indians leave each day in fields of potatoes, carrots and spinach, on banks that line rivers used for drinking and bathing and along roads jammed with scooters, trucks and pedestrians. Devi looks back on her routine with pain and embarrassment. “As a woman, I would have to check where the males were going to the toilet and then go in a different direction,” says Devi, 37, standing outside her one-room mud-brick home. “We used to avoid the daytimes, but if we were really pressured, we would have to go any time of the day, even if it was raining. During the harvest season, people would have sticks in the fields. If somebody had to go, people would beat them up or chase them.” In the shadow of its new suburbs, torrid growth and 300- million-plus-strong middle class, India is struggling with a sanitation emergency. From the stream in Devi’s village to the nation’s holiest river, the Ganges, 75 percent of the country’s surface water is contaminated by human and agricultural waste and industrial effluent. Everyone in Indian cities is at risk of consuming human feces, if they’re not already, the Ministry of Urban Development concluded in September. Economic Drain Illness, lost productivity and other consequences of fouled water and inadequate sewage treatment trimmed 1.4-7.2 percent from the gross domestic product of Cambodia, Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam in 2005, according to a study last year by the World Bank’s Water and Sanitation Program. Sanitation and hygiene-related issues may have a similar if not greater impact on India’s $1.2 trillion economy, says Guy Hutton, a senior water and sanitation economist with the program in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Snarled transportation and unreliable power further damp the nation’s growth. Companies that locate in India pay hardship wages and ensconce employees in self- sufficient compounds. The toll on human health is grim. Every day, 1,000 children younger than 5 years old die in India from diarrhea, hepatitis- causing pathogens and other sanitation-related diseases, according to the United Nations Children’s Fund. ‘Sanitation Crisis’ For girls, the crisis is especially acute: Many drop out of school once they reach puberty because of inadequate lavatories, depriving the country of a generation of possible leaders. “India cannot reach its full economic potential unless they do something about this sanitation crisis,” says Clarissa Brocklehurst, Unicef’s New York-based chief of water, sanitation and hygiene, who worked in New Delhi from 1999 to 2001. When P.V. Narasimha Rao opened India to outside investment in 1991, the country went on a tear. For most of this decade, India has placed just behind China as the world’s fastest- growing major economy. Revenue from information technology and outsourcing jumped more than 300-fold to $52 billion a year as Tata Consultancy Services Ltd., Infosys Technologies Ltd. and other homegrown giants took on computer-related work for Western corporations. Annual per-capita income more than doubled to 24,295 rupees ($468) in the seven years ended on March 31, 2008, before the full force of the financial meltdown kicked in. Even during the current global recession, India’s economy will expand 5.1 percent in 2009, the International Monetary Fund projects. Hygiene Breakdown Yet India’s gated office parks with swimming pools and food courts and enclaves such as the Aralias in Gurgaon, outside New Delhi, which features 6,000-square-foot (557-square-meter) condominiums, mask a breakdown of the most basic and symbolic human need -- hygiene. Devi, who installed her neighborhood’s first toilet, a squat-style latrine in a whitewashed outhouse, created a point of pride in a village where some people empty chamber pots into open drains in front of their homes. Like most of Kachpura’s residents, more than half of India’s 203 million households lack what Western societies consider a necessity: a toilet. India has the greatest proportion of people in Asia behind Nepal without access to improved sanitation, according to Unicef. Some 665 million Indians practice open defecation, more than half the global total. In China, the world’s most populous country, 37 million people defecate in the open, according to Unicef. ‘It’s an Embarrassment’ “It’s an embarrassment,” says Venkatraman Anantha- Nageswaran, 45, an Indian working in Singapore as chief investment officer for Asia Pacific at Bank Julius Baer & Co., which managed $234 billion at the end of 2008. “It’s a country that aspires to being an international power and which, according to various projections, will be the third-largest economy in 20-30 years.” India has the highest childhood malnutrition rates in the world: 44 percent of children younger than 5 are underweight, according to the International Food Policy Research Institute. “Malnourished children are more susceptible to diarrheal disease, and with more diarrheal disease they become more malnourished,” says Jamie Bartram, head of the World Health Organization’s water, sanitation, hygiene and health group. “If we collectively could fix the world’s basic water and sanitation problems, we could reduce childhood mortality by nearly a third.” Half of India’s schools don’t have separate toilets for males and females, forcing young women to use unisex facilities or nothing at all. Twenty-two percent of girls complete 10 or more years of schooling compared with 35 percent of boys, a national family health survey finished in 2006 found. Indignity, Infections Devi says she was concerned that her 14-year-old daughter would suffer the indignity and infections she herself endured due to poor menstrual hygiene. That was a major reason she bought a toilet, taking out a 7,000 rupee, interest-free loan from the U.S. Agency for International Development, which enabled her to pay for her new latrine over 18 months. The agency also gave her a 3,000 rupee grant and a 2,500 rupee-a-month job with its Cross-Cutting Agra Project, which promotes hygiene and sanitation in her village. Until then, she, like her husband, was unemployed. Her daughter’s situation has also improved, Devi says. “When she has her period, it’s especially difficult for her to go out into the fields,” she says. “It’s better to have a toilet at home -- as it is for every female.” Girls’ Education Barriers that keep girls from equal education compromise the nation’s future, says Renu Khosla, director of CURE India, a New Delhi group that works to improve water and sanitation for the poor, including in Kachpura. “We will have a less skilled population of youth,” she says. “Every year of schooling reduces household poverty by bringing down the family size and increasing skill levels.” So far, companies looking to locate in India haven’t been turned off by the sanitation shortcomings, says Anshuman Magazine, chairman of CB Richard Ellis Group Inc.’s South Asian unit, which manages about 62 million square feet of property in the country. “India is a completely different planet,” he says. As such, employees know not to drink tap water, and employers provide clean washrooms. “As far as offices are concerned, I have never come across anyone raising these concerns. Businesses run on making money and opportunities. Since 2004, we have seen huge interest from foreign investors and businesses.” Hardship Allowances International corporations that set up branches in Mumbai and New Delhi compensate by paying hardship allowances of 20-25 percent of employees’ salary compared with 10-15 percent in Beijing and Shanghai, says Lee Quane, the Hong Kong-based Asian general manager of ECA International Ltd., a human resources advisory firm. Some big Indian companies count on private utilities, bottled water and walled compounds with electric fences. Infosys’s resort-style campus on the outskirts of Bangalore has manicured lawns, a Japanese garden, a swimming pool, a golf course and a Domino’s Pizza in its multinational food court. Unlike most households in the nearby city of 6.8 million, India’s No. 2 software maker’s headquarters doesn’t suffer water or power interruptions, says Bhawesh Kumar, its facilities manager. Poverty Trap Infosys stores water from the public network in three underground reservoirs that can hold 2.2 million liters (580,000 gallons), or two days’ supply. The water passes through sand and carbon filters and purifiers, making it cleaner than what’s available to local people, he says. Attendants clean the brown- tiled bathrooms and refresh supplies of paper hand towels hourly during the business day. Infrared sensors ensure that toilets are flushed after each use. Outside such compounds, dirty water and poor hygiene can trap communities in a cycle of disease, malnutrition and poverty, Bartram says. Worldwide, 18 percent of the population, or 1.2 billion people, rely on open defecation and about 884 million drink unsafe water, according to Unicef. Every year, more than 200 million tons of human sewage goes uncollected and untreated, fouling the environment. Each gram of feces can contain 10 million virus particles, 1 million bacteria, 1,000 parasite cysts and 100 parasite eggs, the UN found. Fetid Waters In Devi’s village, sewage and household wastewater flow along open drains that line both sides of narrow alleyways. The fetid water gathers in a shallow channel choking with plastic containers, discarded footwear and household trash. A woman carrying a folded mattress on her head steps deftly along a narrow bridge spanning the mire. A mechanical pump chugs on the bank, sucking up the liquid to dispense over a nearby vegetable patch. Children play around the edge, alongside tethered, cud- chewing water buffalo. A man walks past, clutching a water-filled plastic bottle, presumably on his way to defecate. The rest of the slurry empties into a trench coursing along a feces-dotted path through a field of cauliflowers. A shoeless boy uses a long-handled spade to create a new sluice for the black sludge to ooze over the vegetable field. What’s not drained from the trench empties into a cesspool on the flood plain of the Yamuna River, which flows through Delhi and then Agra before joining the Ganges at Allahabad, 1,370 kilometers (850 miles) from its pristine source in the Himalayan mountains. ‘Remorseless Drain’ “If you’ve got feces all around you, it will find its way into your mouth,” Bartram says. “Cholera and typhoid are always dramatic because they come through as outbreaks, and outbreaks catch the news. The real burden is this long, remorseless drain of straightforward, simple diarrheal disease.” Like Devi’s village, less than a fifth of Agra is connected to a sewage system. The 1.3 million people generate more than 150 million liters of effluent each day. The city has the capacity to treat 60 percent of the sewage. There are plans to build three more treatment plants by 2012 with funding from the state and federal governments and the Japan International Cooperation Agency, according to the Agra Municipal Corporation. The U.S. Agency for International Development-funded Cross- Cutting Agra Project and other programs are trying to bridge the sanitation gap. The project helped Devi and 39 other households in her village get toilets during the past two years. Spurring Desire The Indian government is also contributing. Rural families living below the poverty line are eligible for a 1,500 rupee subsidy to build household latrines under the Total Sanitation Campaign. The decade-old program focuses on educating people about the link between good hygiene and health to change behavior and spur their desire for toilets. UN agencies such as Unicef provide technical information and recommendations on toilet systems. Governments and aid groups have strived for decades to overcome India’s sanitation challenges. Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, who led the movement for freedom from foreign domination, grappled with the issue almost a century ago: “The cause of many of our diseases is the condition of our lavatories and our bad habit of disposing of excreta anywhere and everywhere,” Gandhi wrote in 1925. “Sanitation is more important than political independence,” he declared. Taboo Topic Gandhi focused on the Hindu caste system that subjugated the lowest social stratum to the unsavory realm of latrines. For some 4,000 years, so-called bhangis or untouchables earned a modest living by scraping “night soil” from the cavernous household toilet pits of higher castes and carrying it away in pans balanced on their heads. “Culturally, it was taboo in Indian society to talk about human excreta, night soil and all these things,” says Bindeshwar Pathak, who started Sulabh International Social Service Organization, a Delhi-based group whose name means “readily accessible.” The organization has built public toilets and campaigned on human emancipation issues since 1970. Pathak says the tradition of scavenging removed the impetus of society, and especially policy makers, to acknowledge and address the sanitation problem. A.K. Mehta, joint secretary of the Ministry of Urban Development, says India’s close-lipped tradition is changing. “If you have a legacy of thousands of years, you don’t expect it to go away in a decade or so,” Mehta says. “Progress is significant and in the right direction.” Millions Waiting Today, 59 percent of the people in India’s countryside have access to a toilet, compared with 27 percent in 2004, the Department of Drinking Water Supply says. Ten million toilets have been built annually since 2007. More than 30 million households are waiting. Urban dwellers aren’t spared substandard hygiene. In Mumbai, Delhi and other cities where billboards advertise the latest mobile phones and trendy young women sport Prada handbags, the water that’s piped into homes and apartments must be filtered before drinking. And in most homes it’s available only a few hours each day. “Even the biggest cities still have that problem,” says Vishwas Udgirkar, 46, executive director of PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP’s government and infrastructure division in New Delhi. More unsettling, 17 percent of city residents, or 50 million people, don’t have toilets. Fewer than 10 percent of Indian cities have a sewage system. About 37 percent of urban wastewater flows into the environment untreated, where such pathogens as rotavirus, campylobacter and human roundworm can spread via water, soil, food and unwashed hands. ‘Huge Challenge’ “Not attending to this has a cost,” Mehta says. “Between 2001 and ’26, we would be adding another 246 million people to the urban system. How would we meet that huge challenge is the issue.” India is still struggling to find the best way to clean up the mess. “A lot of money has been given for constructing the infrastructure,” says Ajith C. Kumar, an operations analyst with the World Bank’s Water and Sanitation Program in New Delhi. “The predominant experience has been that none of this has worked.” The southeastern state of Andhra Pradesh is a good example. Earlier this decade, the state government helped build 2.95 million household latrines in rural areas. Residents got subsidies worth about $16 in cash plus coupons for 100 kilograms (220 pounds) of rice. Half the toilets went unused or were being used for other purposes, a February 2007 World Bank report found. Roomier Than Homes In the western state of Maharashtra, 1.6 million subsidized toilets were built from 1997 to 2000. About 47 percent are in use. Many toilets are designed without thinking about who’s going to use them, says Payden (who goes by one name), the WHO’s New Delhi-based regional adviser on water, sanitation and health. Some of the new toilets were roomier than homes. “The toilets were much stronger and safer, so they used them for storing grain instead,” she says. Now India is trying a different kind of cash reward to encourage toilet use. The Nirmal Gram Puraskar, or “clean village prize,” gives 50,000-5 million rupees to local governments that end open defecation. Thirty-eight villages qualified in 2005. A year later, 760 villages and 9 municipalities got the prize. In 2008, more than 12,000 awards were presented. Toilets That Pay Santha Sheela Nair, India’s secretary of drinking water supply, is assessing another monetary incentive. In a spacious New Delhi office with a white-tiled floor and white walls, Nair thumbs through a leaflet from a desk stacked with foot-high files and books on sanitation. She stops suddenly and points excitedly to a picture of a white toilet adorned with brightly- colored writing. “This is the first toilet in the world -- in the world -- where you use the toilet and you get paid,” Nair says. The public toilet, in the town of Musiri in the southern state of Tamil Nadu, gives users as much as 12 U.S. cents a month for their excreta. Feces are composted and urine, which is 95 percent water and has already passed through the body’s own filter, the kidneys, is collected, stored in drums and used as fertilizer for bananas and other food crops in a two-year research project by the Tamil Nadu Agricultural University. “The day that I can use your toilet and you pay me instead of me paying you, that will be the day when we have really learned to reuse our waste,” Nair says. Menstrual Hygiene Nair, India’s eighth drinking-water chief in less than a decade, is passionate about her job. On this day in November, the sari-clad government veteran chimes in on baby feces, menstrual hygiene, the use of excrement as fertilizer and other topics few bureaucrats have dared to broach. From 2001 to ’03, Nair was responsible for the water supply in Chennai, formerly called Madras, southern India’s biggest city. Then, as rural development secretary for Tamil Nadu, she helped in the aftermath of the 2004 tsunami. Nair is challenging the accepted wisdom on everything from modern sewers to flushable toilets, to the value of human waste. She says Western-style toilets are inappropriate for India, especially in areas that lack fresh water and have limited funds for sewage treatment plants. Instead, she says, the country has to find cheaper, more efficient and environmentally friendly technologies. Lunar Mission Inspired by the successful landing in November of the Moon Impact Probe, India’s first unmanned lunar mission, Nair is looking skyward for ideas. “In space, you have the most vulnerable situations,” she says, playing a 2-minute YouTube video of an astronaut explaining how to manage bodily functions 100,000 miles from Earth. “They are separating the urine from the feces and drying it,” she says, pointing to her computer monitor. “The urine is processed for re-drinking because they just can’t carry that much water.” Nair says modern sewers aren’t the answer for India. The country can’t afford to waste water by flushing it down a latrine. Instead, she’s encouraging airplane-style commodes that are vacuum cleared or toilets that are attached to contained pits rather than systems that pipe the effluent miles away for treatment. In Nair’s world, recycling human excrement for use as fertilizer is preferable. ‘Our Own Devices’ “We need to invent our own devices which are cost- effective, environmentally sustainable and go with our people,” she says. “We cannot afford the things which are simply things that some civil engineer learned somewhere.” Converting excreta that have been properly dried for 6-24 months into plant food uses less water than traditional sewage systems and is less likely to pollute waterways, Payden says. Bartram says composted sewage that’s been handled correctly can be used in agriculture and for other beneficial purposes with negligible risk to human health. The challenge is to sanitize it so that disease-carrying organisms are eliminated. “Different pathogens vary widely in terms of inactivation,” he says. “Large, robust parasite eggs like the human roundworm, Ascaris, tend to be the longest lived and can remain infectious for years in soil.” Closing the Gap The government has a goal of eliminating open defecation by 2012. Nair says it might happen earlier. “It’s important for us to do it quickly,” she says. Right now, the number of open defecators is roughly double the number of India’s middle class. “This gap will keep widening,” she says. “That is the challenge for us.” For the Devi family, one household in one of India’s thousands of villages, the gap has narrowed. The health and dignity of five people have improved. More of Devi’s neighbors are trying to emulate her example by installing a household latrine and washing their hands with soap. “We have gone from home to home to talk about sanitation and cleanliness,” Devi says, standing on the bank of the Yamuna River as cattle drink from its fetid waters. “The solution to a thousand household problems is getting a toilet.” As India strives to build on two decades of growth, the nation’s sanitation struggle reveals how complicated Devi’s goal remains -- and how damaging the failure to meet it may be. To contact the reporter on this story: Jason Gale in Singapore at j.gale@bloomberg.net Last Updated: March 3, 2009 18:00 EST