Special feature of 1905 film network Among this week’s new films, an Indian film called India is hard to ignore.
Listen to the name, it is full of "taste".
The douban score of 7.3 is not outstanding, but it is enough to rank first in the reputation of new films on the weekend of "film shortage".
The slogan is also very domineering: changing 600 million Indian women was recommended by Bill Gates every year.
This is not an exaggeration.
Among the ten most inspiring things selected by Bill Gates in 2017, this film is on the list. Bill Gates commented: "The Toilet Hero is a Bollywood romance of newlyweds, which has aroused public concern about India’s urgent health problems."
That’s right. Frankly speaking, whether it’s an image or a narrative technique, "Toilet Hero" has nothing outstanding. But its value lies in its courage to uncover the most painful scars in Indian society and face up to social problems such as health and safety, gender discrimination and official corruption. This courage deserves a standing ovation.
Before watching the film, you might as well torture yourself with three souls:
Can you accept going to the toilet in the wild every day?
Can you accept walking to the toilet outside the village at four o’clock every morning?
Will you marry a man who has no toilet at home?
The above three "shy" questions are exactly the dilemmas that the heroine Jaye and hundreds of millions of Indian women must face in The Toilet Hero.
In the movie, the new wife, Jaye, unwittingly married to an Indian rural area without a toilet, and faced the embarrassment of having to go to the toilet in the wild every morning.
Jaye and the Women’s Federation of the same village walked to the field to go to the toilet.
Facing the toilet problem, her husband, Keshav, racked his brains to come up with tricks such as rubbing other people’s toilets, rubbing train toilets, and even taking risks to steal public toilets. However, he found that traditional concepts are like iron walls, and it is difficult to get a toilet.
Husband "steals" for his wife to move the toilet.
Jia Ye Yiran, who received a college education and grew up in an enlightened family, proposed "divorce without a toilet" and became a national event on TV. More and more wives and women have followed suit, and a toilet revolution that is expected to rewrite the fate of "600 million women" is on the verge.
For most China audiences, the national revolution caused by a toilet in "The Toilet Hero" is so strange and magical. But the words "adapted from real events" remind us at all times that everything in the film was once a living fact.
In 2011, a wife named Anita Nally in Madhya Pradesh, India, ran away from her husband’s house after a few days of marriage because she couldn’t stand going to the toilet outdoors, and boldly put forward the appeal of not going home without a toilet. Finally, with the help of the government, Anita’s husband finally built a toilet. She was also commended by former Indian President Pratibha Patil.
So in reality, how serious is the open toilet problem in India?
According to the statistics of UNICEF in 2016, the global open-air toilet population totaled 950 million.
Among them, the countries and regions with the highest proportion are not Africa with relatively backward economy and infrastructure, but India, which is famous for its high technology.
According to statistics, a total of 569 million Indians still go to the toilet in the open air, accounting for nearly half of the total population, far higher than the population without mobile phones. More than 53% of households (the proportion in rural areas is as high as 70%) have no toilets.
The weight of Indian outdoor excrement can reach 100,000 tons every year, which is enough to fill the whole Wembley Stadium in London.
Some people say that the whole country of India is like a large open-air toilet, which is not an exaggeration.
In the fields and lanes of India, people carrying buckets in the film can be seen everywhere. There is no doubt that they are walking on the way to the toilet. …
The water in the bucket is used for cleaning after defecation (please make up for it yourself during cleaning).
For Indian men, this does not seem to be a problem. For example, in the film, the father of the man chooses the canal at home to go to the toilet like no one is watching.
But for women, the inconvenience of going to the toilet in the open air can be imagined. For privacy and safety reasons, you can only choose to go to the suburbs to excrete in the dark, and you need to control it as much as possible during the day.
According to the survey, Indian women can endure for an average of 13 hours a day, which is undoubtedly a double torture to the mind and body.
Women who go to the toilet outdoors also need to guard against the harassment of hooligans at all times. The light will be swayed by the headlights and teased with words. Seriously, it will give malicious people an opportunity to cause irreparable harm.
Every year, tens of thousands of Indian girls who enter adolescence have no choice but to drop out of school because of the inconvenience of going to the toilet.
Not to mention the health problems caused by going to the toilet in the open air. According to statistics, nearly 400 children under the age of 5 die of dysentery every day in India, and the number of people suffering from chronic malnutrition due to digestive system diseases is even higher.
There are many dangers in going to the toilet in the open air. Why do Indians still go their own way?
On the one hand, traditional ideas and religious teachings are deeply rooted.
The Indian code of religion and behavior "Manu Code" wrote: "People should excrete away from their houses.",advocating" born in nature, transformed into nature ".
Repairing toilets at home means leaving dirty things at home. It is even more disrespectful to let the toilet coexist with the deity. This passage in the Code of Manu was also used by the elders of the village committee to educate Keshav, who proposed to repair the toilet.
Unexpectedly, Keshav’s next passage debunked the "hypocritical faces" of these so-called devout believers.
"Manu Code" not only stipulates that it should be excreted away from houses, but also stipulates that in order to protect the clean water source, people should not defecate near the river or water body. This is quite different from what the village chief and many Indians did.
Indians go to the toilet in the open air not so much because they believe in piety, but because of their own convenience and habits, they do not hesitate to use religion as a shield.
Indians’ reluctance to repair toilets is also related to the caste system.
According to the caste system, Indians are divided into four grades: Brahman, Khrushchev, Vedas and sudra. Besides this, there are "unacceptable untouchables", also known as "Da Park Jung Su".
In the traditional Indian concept, the "dirty work" such as cleaning garbage and toilets can only be done by Dalit class in Park Jung Su.
In India, cleaning up feces and garbage is done by people at the lowest level.
Therefore, even if toilets are repaired, high-caste Indians will not clean them themselves, but need to hire Da Park Jung Su to clean them. With the awakening of the Dalit class, this cost is getting higher and higher, which is why Indians are unwilling to repair toilets.
With the continuous development of economy and culture, the government gradually realizes the importance of health.
On the anniversary of Gandhi’s birthday in 2014, Indian Prime Minister Modi announced the implementation of the "Clean India" plan, allocating about 30 billion US dollars to build toilets nationwide and promote sanitary toilets. It is planned to completely eliminate the phenomenon of open-air toilets in 2019 and Gandhi’s 150th birthday.
Indian Prime Minister Modi
Now, a few years later, the government has built millions of toilets nationwide, but the problem of going to the toilet in the open air has not been fundamentally solved.
The so-called "public toilets" on the streets of India
The funds for repairing toilets were embezzled and misappropriated by governments at all levels. The repaired toilets lack maintenance, poor sanitary conditions, and many of them are occupied and reduced to barns and storage rooms.
It’s ironic that a man is peeing at the poster of "Toilet Hero".
In a report in National Geographic, Indian women reported that public toilets have long waiting time, poor sanitation and ventilation, often without water and electricity, and will be closed between 11 pm and 4 am. Even many people choose to go to the toilet in the courtyard of the public toilet while waiting, and the toilet loses its meaning.
Akshay kumar, the leading actor in the film, admitted frankly in an interview that he wondered why a country that can launch space rockets and is proud of its high technology can’t solve the "simplest" civilized toilet problem.
As the film says, "it is never easy to change tradition", and "Toilet Hero" is only a small step.
"I made this film to tell Indians that the power of change is in everyone’s hands. Like Anita, as long as everyone can make his own voice firmly, it will certainly affect the people around him, and society will certainly change, "kumar said.
Everything shown in The Toilet Hero may be curious, but it doesn’t need to be laughed at. At least, Indian filmmakers have the courage to expose their scars and face the pain. What about us?
