The Guardian features a story today that is on one of the most basic issues in the world: where we defecate.
And as they report, 2.5 billion people in the world do not have access to toilets that properly separate human waste from human contact.
The issue is of staggering significance to health, gender equality, education and growth.
It's about basic human dignity.
It's about equality.
It's about rights.
I find it staggering that around the world it s reported that more people have access to mobile phones than do a loo.
And that says something is seriously wrong. I'm not decrying mobile technology. I am a massive user of it. But if I had the choice for my family, a loo or a mobile, it's a but of a no-brainer really, isn't it? You'd take the toilet too, wouldn't you?
So why doesn't it happen? Isn't it obvious? It's lack of tax fuelled by a lack of effective government. The two go hand in hand. That's obvious, I would have thought.
It was the rise of local government and broader based taxation in the UK that created effective sanitation in the Victorian era, and with it a health revolution. The industry may be privatised now, but it was the ending of private company involvement in water in the UK that delivered clean water and effective sewerage systems in this country.
In developing countries each scenario will have to be addressed on its own merits, of course. But I find it very hard to see how, ultimately, effective sanitation on the scale required cann be delivered without a role for government and public funding to ensure that the externalities that are an implicit part of this issue can be properly addressed.
And where could the money come from?
Creating effective tax systems is a massive priority. In many cases this revolves around taxing companies, who have a much bigger role to play in these countries. Our reforms to corporation tax, which I have been banging on about, undermine that role.
Beating the abuse of developing countries' tax systems by multinational corporations would help. That's one of the reasons for country-by-country reporting.
Beating tax haven abuse by many wealthy elites from these countries is vital.
To be blunt, ending illicit financial flows is essential if sewage is to flow.
The campaign link is almost obvious. And think of the stickers:
"This toilet is flushed by tax"
"Taking the pee: tax havens"
"Make sewage flow, not money"
"Shit should flow: money does" (Apologies for those offended, but this is what this is about)
This is what I was motivated by when I came into tax justice. I still am. And I still think tax is the answer.
And I can almost see the response. It will be "Money down the drain". I defy someone to say it.
What if it was your child who had to go into a field at night to relieve themselves? It's time we addressed this now. And we could.
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This seems to me the strongest argument against the supply -side supporters -it creates wasted resources and poorly focused priorities. We even have a situation in britain where it is possible to end up being able to fund a mobile whilst not being able to buy food or heat your home.
I’m not anti-technology but the non-efficient market hypothesis just doesn’t get much of the ‘real’ stuff done like create meaningful jobs, and availability of necessities. Underlying this is a debt culture (much worse in the 3rd world) that is chasing its tail and extracting resources from poor countries to pay it all off.
I had to spend a morning helping a cousin in a petty debts court recently. The majority of cases there were being brought by phone companies, who had given mobiles to people for free as part of a 24 month contract. Person loses job, cannot afford £50 per month on mobile phone, tries to give the phone back and is told they cannot.
2 things need to happen: the first is that schools need to educate everyone in basic financial products; the second is that if you extend credit to someone who cannot repay it, you should take some of the blame.
Having said that, mobiles actually are a necessity in the third world as there is no land network. It is only through mobiles that people have access to services like banking that can actually lift them out of poverty. A rural African has more need of a mobile than an urban Brit.
I accept the need for phones, including in Africa etc
But let’s not pretend it’s as important as a loo
It isn’t
your point about education is exactly right. there was a piece on Newsnight last night explaining how the lower and middle classes have an aversion to ‘debt’ so the usurers rebranded it as ‘credit’ and it’s been booming ever since. kids need teaching that if they’re getting ‘credit’, they’re getting screwed.
Simon, if there is any great ideological lesson here (and I’m not sure there is), it is to call out the fantasy that the state has the best interests of its people at heart, and will prioritise allocation of resources accordingly.
If you rely too heavily on the state, and the state has poor governance (which is the real reason these countries don’t have modern sanitation systems), then you’re stuffed.
If the state was so keen to build modern sewerage systems for its people, why didn’t it have them in place well before mobile phones have been around (which is only in the last 15 years or so)?
Even the local authority where I work is cutting social services — but spending several hundred thousand pounds on a pop festival so the Council leader can get his face in the paper with a couple of pop stars. They never seem to run out of money for vanity projects.
I’m not anti-state. I work there! But I am aware of its limitations, and its vulnerability to be hijacked from within for personal gain.
To suggest that this is all about poor governance is complete rubbish, with respect
It is an issue, of course
But this is about resources. The rest is an excuse
Are you suggesting the governments of countries where this problem is the biggest in terms of absolute numbers, such as India (which will be contributing the major share of the numbers quoted in the article), do not have the resources to solve this problem if it were a priority to them?
Really?
India has a space programme, you know.
They have the resources. They just haven’t made it a priority up to now. The Indian PM who ran on the ‘toilets now, temples later’ campaign seemed to understand it.
Working in local government myself, I see this pretty regularly. On a smaller scale, but the concepts are the same – it is mostly down to priorities. And those priorities aren’t necessarily what you’d expect.
It is very clear there aren’t the resources
I do not see why India has a space programme
But I do not see why that means this issue should not be highlighted either
Why do you think ordinary people should be punished in this way?
Adrian-don’t you realise that it’s because these Governments are in the thrall of multinationals and big business that the problems go wrong and many countries have the yolk of IMF debt on their backs which is unpayable and forces ‘conditionality’ on them such as allowing foreign companies to rob them of their sovereignty by taking over their resources and forcing them to export nearly all they have and privatise everything in sight which is then taken over by said MNC’s. Please start looking at real causes rather than assuming the State is feckless in its nature.
It is an extremely worthwhile thing to highlight and I would regard it as an urgent priority.
All I am saying is that a failure of public governance is more of a problem, not a lack of resources, at least as far as India is concerned. PM Narendra Modi (from the BJP which is the more right wing of the 2 main Indian parties) seems to understand this.
(there will be other social influences at work keeping this problem unnecessarily alive, but lack of resources just isn’t one of them)
India is not the world’s poorest country. It has ample resources to solve this.
I know you haven’t personally experienced government from the inside, but are you genuinely unsure why Indian politicians over the years have preferred to allocate vast resources to a space program (and the Commonwealth Games a few years ago. And a nuclear arms programme), rather than solving this problem? Really?
No
And nor do you
But the problem is real
And it can be addressed
And I can say that
And you seem to be saying that it is wrong of me to do so
Why?
India also has a great many tax-dodging oligarchs. an ineffective government doesn’t mean government has to be ineffective. more likely (as is the case in India) it has been captured and corrupted to act in the interest of the few against the many.
as for your own council, maybe if our politicians hadn’t slashed funding in order to give tax cuts to big business and the wealthy they wouldn’t be in this situation. and as for blowing money on stupid stuff, that’s easily solved with greater transparency. once the public get wind of where money is wasted (and councillors feel the back-lash) you can be sure they’ll think twice before doing it again, purely out of self-preservation.
Simon, in response to your 3.36 reply:
Yes, this is exactly what I am saying! Being under the spell of MNCs and other assorted noses-in-troughs is well within the ‘poor governance’ I was referring to. There are other issues at play as well (eg corruption, a ponderous bureaucracy, the caste system etc.).
Why will giving them more resources make the said noses-in-troughs somehow LESS interested in the bigger pie of goodies up for grabs? I can’t think why, but if you can tell me, I will have learned something new today.
Richard, in response to your 4.51 reply:
And nor do I what?
I am not critical of you raising the point. Not at all. But if poor governance makes this a low priority (or at least, has done so in the past), I am not sure how increasing the resources will make much difference.
I think you need to get real here
India is being fleeced for taxes by multinational corporations from Vodafone onwards
I am not saying there aren’t other issues, which of course there are, but I am saying you ware being blind to the points that I have raised.
Most people in the developed world have no idea about lack of basic sanitary conditions. As a regular visitor to the Gambia I see this at first hand, even near the tourist area. How as human beings can we continue to allow this?
Presently I am in Seville airport and have seen the austerity imposed on Spain. 40 per cent unemployment in Cadiz. No society can function in this way. Noeliberalism is destroying functioning societies.
The flipside to austerity is of course the insane binge that went before. The sparsely populated north-east corner of the Iberian peninsula has 4 international airports (La Coruna, Santiago, Vigo and Oporto I believe) within a 100km radius. That doesn’t mean austerity is a solution, but when hundreds of billions are spent on building infrastructure that is not needed, there is going to be pain suffered somewhere, isn’t there?
Of course
That was mad
I agree
But let’s not use silly examples to say that there is no need for infrastructure spending
That’s as absurd as the absurd spending
I wasn’t using it as an argument but as an example.
What I will say about Spain is that even when the economy was massively overheated (official) unemployment was still running at over 10%. As with Greece, there were an awful lot of people who were not paying their dues to the state during the good years.
There are still a great many who are not paying their dues
But what has that to do with your argument on infrastructure?
I have defended you in the past when others have accused you of talking shit. Hopefully this time, they won’t be able to ignore the convenience truth !
another dreary little troll
If I grew food in that field I believe I’d be encouraging my children to do just that. I’d want to spread their defecation over it too, at certain times of the year anyway.
I’m reminded that one of the first Roman success stories was that they got the Britons to scratch around to find money so they could pay to use the official Roman-created toilet rather than go in the fields and bushes as was their wont previously. This wasn’t for health reasons or anything like that, rather it was so the Romans could create demand for their currency, giving it value, and enrich themselvees as a consequence. There was the future for the Britons; in the toilet. So it goes 🙂
“Back in a minute, Marcus, just got to spend a denarius.” I’m sure you’re right, Bill. Pity Shakespeare missed that line . Thanks for raising a smile.
The people using tax havens are creating wealth and jobs in those countries.
You would really trade sanitation for the world for a few jobs for lawyers, bankers and accountants hiding illicit funds in tax havens?
Really?
If a company relocates to a tax haven, what happens is they put a plaque outside an office there, one which they probably share staff in as a single secretary will do, and the board members have to fly in for lunch once a year or so. It doesn’t mean they set up factories there or anything like that. There’s no wealth shared and no jobs either.
people using tax havens don’t create wealth, they extract it. hence the reason they have a huge excess and the people in those countries a huge deficit.
Afraid it’s a bit more complicated than that. There were recently reports of difficulty in overcoming huge cultural barriers in India for example where even when the government built facilities people did not use them, preferring outdoor settings, not appreciating the health consequences. That’s why a UN agency had to spend money on a catchy video as part of a campaign to try and explain and convince people to change their habits.
That does not explain 2.5 billion missing out
Please do not be crass
The Isle of Man has gone through all the relevant puns when it introduced its so-called toilet tax: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-isle-of-man-26271694
I don’t think there would be a problem with paying this grossly unfair tax if it was to help people in third world countries have proper sanitation (now that would have been a worthwhile publicity stunt for the Isle of Man) but the tax is for Government coffers and will go towards keeping them and their employees in huge salaries and pensions.
There was & is a problem in India (& not just India) with completely skewed priorities, whereby money is spent on mobile phones, TV sets, cars, & space programmes but not on supplying people with, say, an electricity supply, indoor plumbing or basic sanitation.
Aid in many developing countries very often gets spent on prestige projects of little real value to local populations when it isn’t simply disappearing into the trouser pockets or numbered Swiss bank accounts of corrupt politicians, generals and officials.
The malign influence of multinational corporations has already been noted. This extends from examples such as Nestlé selling powdered baby milk to mothers unable to read the instructions on the tin, and in any event unable to access clean water to boil up with the milk, or fuel to heat it with, to pharmaceutical companies performing drugs tests on patients without their informed consent, tests very often resulting in their deaths. (John le Carré’s novel ‘The Constant Gardener’ covers this issue.)
Financial exploitation is par for the course. Far more money is siphoned out of the developing world by multinationals each year than they receive in aid from both Governments and voluntary bodies. The December 2013 Report on Global Financial Integrity found that the developing world lost US$5.9 trillion in illicit financial flows between 2002-11 (see: http://www.gfintegrity.org/report/2013-global-report-illicit-financial-flows-from-developing-countries-2002-2011/). That’s $655 billion p.a.! In contrast, total overseas development aid from the OECD countries in 2012 was 2011$129.84 billion, a decline on 2011, when it was $134.47 billion (see: http://www.oecd.org/dac/stats/totaldacflowsataglance.htm).
Re: Bradda’s comment about the Isle of Man so called ‘ toilet tax ‘.
Bradda is either yet another small government idealogue or he/she has fallen for the narrative that government spending is the cause of the current situation. Civil Servants in the Isle of Man are not on huge salaries and pensions and have been subject to the same right wing attacks on their pay and conditions as the UK Civil Service.
The ‘Toilet Tax’ is nothing more than yet another underhand move to extract taxation from the ordinary person, whilst ensuring that taxation demands on the rich tax dodgers remains ludicrously low.
No I’m not a civil servant, never have been never will be.
Re India – isn’t there an issue of there not being enough water for sanitation for a population as big as India?
This doesn’t mean the issue of toilets and sanitation cannot be solved, but I do believe lack of enough water is an issue.
Good point
Stevo, I come from the driest continent, and nobody poos in the rivers or in the street there.
And if you say ‘it is a rich country’, I’ll say that this has been the case for at least the last century (probably longer), when the population wasn’t nearly as rich as it is today.