Can public health engineering take the Nitin Gadkari vision to fruition?

Union transport minister Nitin Gadkari may have inadvertently given violators of the Prime Minister’s Swachh Bharat initiative a reason to pee-joice. His assertion that urine is good for plants and the revelation that he actually stores and recycles his own for the betterment of his verdant Lutyens’ Delhi abode shows that a ‘social nuisance’ could have an ecological relevance. As not everyone has the luxury of an extensive official estate, the average Indians out to illegally relieve themselves in leafy lay-bys can now try to escape penalisation by averring that they were actually helping to enhance India’s green cover. Indeed, they can even claim theirs was a philanthropic urge, not a bodily necessity.

If indeed the minister is serious about his advocacy of this urine therapy — and has enough proof to back his contention — he should speedily institute a system for harvesting and storing this cheap and renewable source of fertiliser. It would have to be in a suitably hygienic manner, naturally. He could also consider offering people an incentive for not wasting this resource by the wayside by redesignating a few public toilets in every area as collection centres. If he also announces that all generous donations would earn cashback facilities, the chances are that odoriferous public walls would soon cease to be a problem.