17
36. Before all comes the necessity of bringing in the water from the
Ekruk Tank itself. If this is done, I feel confident that the bowel complaint
death-rate will diminish, but coincidently with the introduction of pure water,
action must be taken to carry it away after it has been fouled in domestic use
by a proper system of sewers. At present the very high fever-rate is due, in my
opinion, to the fact that most of the water used in houses soaks into the ground
close to human habitations, and thus renders the sub-soil damp and malarious.
Now Sholápur is most favourably situated in having laud on its immediate vici
-
nity to which the outfall of the sewers could be taken, and it is moreover on the
line of railway, so that there will be no difficulty in procuring the necessary
material from Bombay. It may be useful to state the cost of glazed stone-ware
p i p e s a s l a i d d o w n i n B o m b a y : —
Rs. a. p.
Pipes, 4 inches in diameter, cost . . . 0 5 3 per running foot.
" 6 " " " . . .
0 8 0
"
" 9 " " " . . .
0 10 3
"
"12 " " " . . .
1 2 7
"
The able engineer who has proposed the introduction of the Ekruk water into
the town would, I feel confident, provide the Municipality with a scheme which
would do away with the necessity of employing bhungies, and which would
remove all the effete matter from the town before it had time to decompose, and
the municipality would soon see the immense good they had effected by the
death-rate being permanently reduced. It would not, in my opinion, be possible
to connect every house with the main sewer, but a privy with three or four seats
for the separate accommodation of as many houses might be erected, and in the
same way common bathing-places and troughs for washing clothes might be built,
and public latrines might be conveniently placed in different parts of the town.
For wealthy people, and in the houses of private gentlemen where the ladies do not
appear in public, separate privy accommodation could be made, but in all cases the
privy should invariably be detached from the house and erected in a corner of the
compound with a clear air space of at least three feet all round it. In the mean
-
time no new privy should be allowed to be built except it is thus detached from
the house, and the floor of all the existing privies should be paved and the liquid
filth be received into a dammered iron receptacle. No more public privies on the
present plan should be erected, but if any more are built, they should be made after
a plan recently introduced by Mr. Arthur Crawford, where the whole material is
of iron and the cost is cheap. The present disgraceful state of the private
privies should be allowed to continue no longer, and as the only effectual remedy
I recommend that a halalcore cess should be imposed at once, and that all halal
-
cores should be declared, as in Bombay, public servants. Difficulty may be
experienced at first by the private halalcores striking work, but a telegram to the
Municipal Commissioner in Bombay would ensure the transmission of the
requisite number of men. Before this tax is imposed, an accurate census should
be made to ascertain the actual number of privies in the town, and then one per
-
son might be told off to clean 25 or 30 privies, so that it will be easy to see the
number really required.
37. But this leads me to speak of the present conservancy arrangements,
which are thoroughly bad in every respect. During my visits to the City I was
much struck with the entire absence of any skilled supervision. The Municipal
Secretary, Mr. Trimbuk Martund, is over-worked, and it is utterly out of the
question that he can attend to his own legitimate duties and exercise a supervi-
sion over the City as well, and as the art of cleaning of a town is a matter of
training and requires an apprenticeship as much as any other trade, and as those
who have never had this training do not observe infringements of the Act which
would immediately strike a man who has been taught the rudiments of practical
s a n i t a t i o n ; I mo s t s t r o n g l y a d v i s e t h e Mu n i c i p a l C o mmi s s i o n e r s t o p l a c e t h e
B 602—5