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Scientific Memoirs by

certain of the largest centres of population, let us look at what is generally known
as the Indian method of the disposal of that form of refuse from which we have
most to fear. Here the absence of an organic water-supply-drainage system, the
cheapness of labour and the availability of land have indicated and justified the
prevalent method of the surface burial of excreta by what is known as the
" trenching system." We have been fortified in our procedure by the designation
it has received as " Nature's method " in its simplest and most direct form,
and where it is carried out with due regard to all the essential conditions, and
where subsequent cultivation is not delayed, we have perhaps the most simple,
scientific and adequate means of disposal; but it imposes special difficulties
and risks upon the stage of removal. It is equally safe to affirm that this
system, as carried out, has failed to solve the most important problem of Indian,
sanitation, and it is obvious that where a system of this kind falls short of perfect
success, it opens the way to very special dangers in this country. And apart
from the possibility of securing perfection in detail, it is often impossible to avail
ourselves of this method. In the first place, although the great majority of the
population is scattered in small agricultural communities over the enormous area
available, yet there are a large and increasing number of towns with a considerable
number of inhabitants in each. At the last census there were 28 towns each
with a population of from 100,000 to 821,000; 48 towns of from 50,000 to
100,000; 150 towns of from 20,000 to 50,000; 1,407 towns of from 10,000 to
20,000; altogether there were 1,831 communities with a population of 3,000 and
upwards, aggregating approximately 27 million souls. There was, in fact, ten
years ago, as large an urban population as in Great Britain at the same date.

Urban population.

     To any one acquainted with the structural conditions of Indian towns, it will
be obvious that, as regards the first three categories at least, comprising a total of
226 communities, the problem of adequate removal and disposal by trenching
presents great difficulties, and in most cases they are insuperable. Indeed it may
be said that where adequate knowledge and control are available, the difficulties
are such as to render the system impracticable; where, as in the case of the
village communities which include go per cent. of the population, " trenching "
might be carried out to the best advantage, the essential knowledge and control
are too often wanting. Here for the most part individual freedom of action
prevails; the excreta are deposited upon the surface of the soil, or where an
advance is attempted upon this primitive absence of method, the collected night-
soil is conveyed just beyond the inhabited site and deposited en masse in more
or less deep excavations in the soil, which is a rough and ready modification
of the cess-pit system, but lacking its admittedly inadequate safeguards.