Recently we saw a village in Drass area of Kargil district, second coldest inhabited place on the earth, protesting over scarcity of water. Two days later, a video of another village from Kargil had gone viral on social media where people were seen lapsed into violence reportedly on a dispute over water. Insufficient supply of water has remained an essential issue especially in town area and also in villages.

Few miles away from the above incidents, few folk women in Minjee village, while shifting out waste from traditional dry toilet, were suggesting to replace the traditional toilets with the modern flush toilets. A woman counted a number of households that have adopted the water-flush toilets. They were advocating for this change because of work load over the folk women.

The debate over Ladakhi dry toilet is interlinked with the severe water crisis that Ladakh is facing due to depletion of glaciers and ground water. Gender equality and environmental degradation are two other concerns that cannot be separated from this debate.

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The Ladakhi dry toilets are a two storeyed engineering with one or two holes in between the two storey that is used as toilet. People throw a shovelful of soil down the hole after using it, to avoid smell. It provides a place also to dump house waste and ashes. Unlike the modern toilet it does not require water to flush the waste. The waste accumulated in the basement needs to clear once in a year and transported to the agricultural field as manure for upcoming sowing season. In autumn soil would cut from the field to transport back to the toilet. This it is a complete cycle.

In this cycle, it does not waste water to flush the waste and also produce manure. A poster outside a dry toilet in a monastery at Leh explains that “Traditional Ladakhi toilets do not waste or pollute water like water toilets, and they also produce useful manure for fields and trees. Please throw a shovelful of earth down the hole after each use.”

Many thinkers including the Swedish linguist, Helena-Norberg Hodge, have described Ladakhi dry toilets as “environmentally friendly” in desert like Ladakh where the environment is fragile and water scarce.

Leh district of Ladakh is already facing a severe shortage of water since the influx of tourists has increased tremendously. The residents in Ladakh are adapted to live with less than 25 litres of water per day, but tourists consume 75 to 100 litres; that puts immense pressure in the cold desert with limited water supply, explains Environmentalist Chandra Bhushan. In 2018, the number of tourists visited Ladakh was around three lac which was more than double to the population of District Leh. Due to the water crisis, Chandra Bhushan warned that Ladakh cannot sustain intense tourism pressure any longer.

At such a time ground water, which is source for many in the Leh town area, are also decreasing with the huge usage. As the snow and rainfall is also on decrease, the ground water has not filled again. In such a time, the depleting glaciers is also a concern. A recent report shows that Glaciers in Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh are melting at a “significant” rate. The study, that used satellite data, find that over 1200 glaciers in the Himalayan region saw an annual reduction in mass of 35 centimeters (cm) on average between 2000 and 2012.

In such a situation, Leh authorities, who have already adopted and tasted the sweetness of Tourism, instead of demanding a selective tourism approach want the tourists to use the dry toilets. It is hard to say, how much they would be successful in persuading the ever-changing tourists; otherwise this model seems not feasible. To take a U-turn from water-flush toilets to traditional dry toilets may become a challenge for the tourist-based economy, Leh.

Now, returning 200 km back to Kargil that has not adopted to the water-flush toilets yet. Imagine, what would happen, if replace the dry toilets with modern flush-toilet? It would put a lot of strain on water which is already in severe shortage. Kargil has to learn a lesson from neighbouring district Leh which has already failed due to shift from traditional to modern.

Second the construction of pit under the ground for modern toilets would also pollute the ground water which is also a main source of drinking water in many areas. The town area in proper Kargil has very little space for pit, thus would put the drainage waste towards river water. Considering all the loopholes traditional dry toilets is a sustainable panacea for Ladakh’s major concerns – environmental degradation and severe water crisis.

Now remains the gender issue. It is praise worthy that district Kargil is casteless society where the burden to perform cleaning and drainage work is not on a particular group. However, in some villages – not all – it is the women folk who are solely expected to clean the toilet waste. This is a mindset where even the women folk don’t want a “Khyoga Butsa” (Male) to enter in the ground floor of the toilet. As Kargil has already adopted to many changes, this mindset also has to diminish and males have to share the burden from women in cleaning the toilet waste. To provide mask and body cover while on work in cleaning waste is must to avoid dust and smell.

District Leh needs an immediate resolution of the issue as they are facing strain due to huge tourist influx. A study of Bhutan model for selective tourism would help them in putting a gag on the number of tourists visiting the district. The Ladakh Union Territory administration would give a think about it.

For Kargil which has not yet adopted the modern toilets, this is an “Early Warning” that needs “Early Action” to sustain the tradition of dry toilets. The government, civil societies, NGOs and media has the responsibility to create awareness on benefits of traditional toilets and drawbacks of flash toilets. Ladakh must understand that a shovelful of soil is much cheaper than a bucketful of water.

Data collected by the Indian Meteorology Department revealed that for the past 35 years, minimum temperatures have been rising by nearly 1 degree C in Ladakh during the winter months and 0.5 degrees C during the summer.