Charanjeet Kaur has been at Pakoda Chowk in Tikri border of Delhi for nearly two months now agitating with the rest of the farmers against the agri laws. She is from Ratona village in Sangrur district in Punjab. While she was there for the long haul, she said, and had no intention of going back before the farmers’ demands were met, she was weary and agitated about the lack of clean toilets in the area.
“We have to go for open defecation,” lamented the 45-year-old. The women who are a part of the agitation are having a tougher time than their male counterparts. “We rise at four o’clock in the morning, and go in a group to find secluded places where we can defecate,” she said.
Charanjeet is one of the thousands of women at Tikri who are miserable and being forced to face the indignity of open defecation and bathing outdoors. Many women protesters even said they were eating less and limiting their intake of water so that they would not need to use the toilets often.
They have been camping at Tikri and Sanghu, two of the largest protest sites on Delhi’s border, since November, 2020, protesting against the new agri laws.
Between, December 19 and December 22 last year, a rapid assessment survey was conducted by the Delhi and Haryana chapters of Jan Swasthya Abhiyan (JSA). It is a national level movement on health and health care that highlights concerns of the protesters and puts them forward to the central government, state governments, local bodies and other concerned authorities. The aim is to ensure good quality sanitation, water supply, solid waste management and health facilities at the protest sites.
The survey was undertaken at five protest sites, at Singhu, Tikri, Shahjahanpur, Gazipur and Palwal. In total 201 respondents were surveyed (92 at Singhu; 70 at Tikri; 23 at Shahjahanpur; 12 in Gazipur; and four at Palwal.
Of the respondents the survey spoke to, nearly three in every five (57.5 per cent) said they relied on open sites for defecation.
“We resist the urge to relieve ourselves at night. We have disturbed sleep and endure so much discomfort and pain,” Sukhpreet Kaur, a 20-year-old from Deepsingh Wala village in Faridkot, Punjab, who has been a part of the protest for 70 days at the Tikri border, told Gaon Connection.
When the women are menstruating, their problems increase manifold. Sometimes they have to walk for three kilometres, to find a safe and secluded space for their ablutions. Obtaining sanitary pads was difficult and disposing them even more so. The survey found that nearly 31 per cent of the respondents had to dispose of the used pads by the side of the roads, as there was no other way of properly disposing them.
“We set up brick walls and bathe on one side of it, or simply change clothes in our tents. This border is a vast, open plain. Some people have set up some tents as toilets but apart from that, there is really no other option,” Baljeet Kaur from Khariaal village, Punjab, told Gaon Connection.
There is no electricity there so the area is plunged in darkness at night and the cold does not improve matters. Some women like 60-year-old Jasbir Kaur from Gatu of Barnala, Punjab, who has made her home at Tikri for over two months now, walks an hour to a mall where she does her business and even washes her clothes there. Forty seven per cent of the respondents of the JSA survey complained that brick and mortar toilets were usually located far off and there was difficulty in accessing them.
Further, lack of electricity around these toilets was another reason women, even though they did not want to defecate in the open, could not venture there after dark. At Tikri’s protest site, there is also a rising concern about the waste getting accumulated without proper disposal systems in place.
The strain is beginning to tell on some women. Jaswant Kaur from Barnala, has body ache, she said. The 65-year-old complained of headaches due to lack of sleep and, she said, even her feet were hurting because she was forced to walk long distances to find a bathroom.
“We have built ourselves a little tin bathroom where we bathe. When a girl goes in to bathe, another girl stands guard outside. After using it, we lock it so that the men do not use it,” Kamaldeep Kaur from Faridkot, said. The 20-year-old has to rise early as she has volunteer duty at the main stage from 10 o’clock in the morning after breakfast.
Girls face physical problems like abdominal pain and body aches during periods every month. Kamalpreet added, “Girls get used to living with their periods. But, besides sitting on a protest, we also have to cook and perform other duties. So, if we suffer abdominal pain, we come to our tents and rest.”
Thankfully, there is no drinking water problem at the border as villagers nearby provide them with bottles of water. And there is a continuous supply of food for the protestors supplied from their villages back home.
“But, inadequate mobile toilets, and their improper maintenance have rendered these toilets dirty and unusable pushing a considerable number of protesters to resort to open defecation,” said Satnam Singh, state coordinator, Jan Swasthya Abhiyan -Haryana, who is also a core member of the survey team.
However, while the problems the women protestors are facing are very real and the exhaustion and inconveniences, unimaginable, the women protestors say they have no intention of returning to their villages, unless the government repeals the agri laws. Many women have left their children back at home.
