New Delhi: Every time a comic book tells a story, it tends to stay with you forever, leaving a lasting impact. That’s exactly the motto of ‘A Sludge Story,’ a comic book published by the Bengaluru-based organization Consortium for DEWATS (Decentralised Wastewater Treatment Systems) Dissemination Society or CDD Society that provides feasible sanitation solutions across the country. Introducing Buland Babu, he is here not just to educate you, but also to raise awareness about why India needs a proper system to treat human waste. In a lighthearted, yet effective way, the book gives the message and solution on how cities across India can too adopt a good faecal sludge treatment plant which effectively treats human waste.
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Meet the sanitation star cast of a comic book that explains the need for human waste treatment
A Sludge Story deals with a person named Buland who always wants the betterment of the society, together with the people of his city. He tries to make a difference by finding an effective solution to the treatment of human waste. The story tries to break down the current treatment facilities available for human waste in India and explains about the unsafe repercussions to the environment and as well as human life if we continue to follow the poor sanitation management.
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The Adventures Of Buland Babu comes to an end by setting up a Faecal Sludge plant in the city, passing on the strong message that it is possible to set up an effective treatment plant for human waste.
Explaining why the team came up with the comic concept for a technical subject of sanitation, Tarika Vaswani, a CDD Society member said, if we were to give you a content-heavy report loaded with statistics on how human waste is affecting India along with solutions in a text-book style , would you be motivated to read it? No, right? The comic book style is intentional – to bring to people and the government’s notice that there is an urgent need for India to change the way we deal with human waste.
Currently, in India, there is only one Faecal Sludge Treatment plant, that’s located on the outskirts of Bengaluru, in the neighbouring town named Devannahalli. The plant is successfully treating 100% of the faecal sludge collected from pits and septic tanks in Devanahalli today.
Highlighting this aspect Tarika added, the biggest problem of faecal sludge management in India is the lack of a proper disposal point for the waste once it has been collected. Much education and unawareness is needed on this front for corrective action to be taken.
That’s exactly what this comic book, A Sludge Story, tries to do. From schools to organisations to government officers, this book is finding a larger audience, simply because the issue of treatment of human waste needs to be known by each and every one of us.
The book was launched in collaboration with Twist Open Innovations, a design studio, in February during the faecal sludge management conference in Chennai, and since then some 1000 copies have been distributed by the CDD Society.
This is one of the important yet neglected issues and since there is an urgent need for a change in the way we deal with human waste, we thought what’s better than a comic to pass on this effective communication to the masses, signs of Tarika Vaswani.
Read the full comic here and take some of the ideas in there seriously!
For your free copy (limited free copies available), please write to bangalore@cddindia.org with your full address and phone number, and CDD Society will be more than happy to send across a copy to you.
