A crying shame

Twinkle Khanna’s Instagram post where she is mocking a man defecating on a public beach has been getting a lot of flak on the Internet. Twinkle took to the beach and snapped a photo of a man while he was squatting out in the sand. “Good morning and I guess here is the first scene of Toilet Ek Prem Katha part 2, (sic) ” the actress wrote in the caption. While her thought may have been noble as she tried to highlight the issue brought forward in her husband’s film, Twitterati and Instagrammers slammed the actress for the way she did it. The consensus is that she should not have shamed the man, especially since she comes from a place of privilege.

However, shaming has been used by several platforms countrywide as a way to combat urination and defecation in public places. A campaign was held in Mumbai last year wherein people urinating at the roadside would have their picture taken and put up online as a public nuisance. Hyderabad also had a similar campaign where they were made to wear garlands as a sarcastic mark of shaming.

While urinating and defecating in public spaces is definitely a nuisance, shaming may not be the best way to go about eradicating the issue. Aakar Patel believes that shaming people only adds to their embarrassment, while having little effect on the issue itself. “I have a problem with naming and shaming individuals in any kind of situation, this being only one of them. This kind of vigilantism, where you identify people and try to expose them, is not something that should be encouraged, by the government or an actress, or anyone really,” he says, adding, “In a country like India, where the law system is anyway slow, it is even more dangerous to take these actions, since it may incite mob violence.”

Stand-up comedian Sorabh Pant also believes that people need to focus more on the infrastructure side of things. “What a lot of people overlook is that we don’t have facilities and infrastructure for public toilets, even in the city. A number of people would actually want to go to public toilets but are unable to do so because there aren’t any; I have spoken to a number of them and they have told me this themselves,” he says.

Pritish Nandy agrees. “Even in one of India’s most so-called developed cities — Mumbai — you will find wide stretches with no public toilet. That is what the government needs to focus on right away. I don’t have a problem with Twinkle’s tweet, because she was probably just trying to be funny. However, for the government to have campaigns shaming people to the correct path is rather ironic, since they are the ones that need to take action and create more facilities for the people,” he asserts.

Ad-guru Prahlad Kakkar on the other hand disagrees, going so far as to applaud Twinkle for opening up a crucial debate. “Whether she is coming from a place of privilege or not, the fact of the matter is that she is right and you can’t overlook that. While a number of people are disagreeing with her, a much larger part of the population would agree. The opposition has simply given her post more traction than it would have otherwise got, so in a way, it’s actually helped her cause,” he explains.

On the issue of public defecation and urination itself, Prahlad thinks that the government is doing its bit, but a long road still remains. “There are subsidies being offered by the government so that people in villages build toilets in their own homes. Of course in cities, more public toilets also need to be built, especially for the sake of women, who also face safety issues from not having proper facilities to use. Also, one needs to look at the fact that diseases like e-coli can spread from defecation in the soil. So, shaming is one tool that can be used to get that end result, but it must be used hand-in-hand with improvement of facilities,” he signs off.