Sanjeeda Khatoon’s life is a stark reminder of the everyday struggles women face when trying to access basic sanitation in India’s informal settlements. Her story from Bhim Nagar, a basti in Mumbai, reveals how gender, poverty, unpaid care work, and systemic neglect intersect, making sanitation not just a technical issue but a deeply gendered human rights crisis.

Thirty-seven-year-old Sanjeeda migrated to Mumbai from Sitamarhi district in Bihar 18 years ago. Today, she lives with her husband and seven children in a small home in Bhim Nagar.

Her husband, who suffers from arthritis, has barely been able to work for the last few years. Sanjeeda supports the family by doing embroidery work, earning only ₹100–150 a day for four hours of labour.

Housing insecurity adds to this precarity. Bhim Nagar is labelled ‘illegal’, and the government has scheduled its demolition for November 2025. The community witnessed a similar demolition in 2016, leaving families in rubble overnight. Like most newer migrants, Sanjeeda does not qualify for resettlement because she cannot provide proof of residence before 1995. With her Aadhaar issued in 2014, she is deemed ineligible for permanent housing schemes.

For Sanjeeda and her teenage daughter, even using a toilet is stressful and frightening.

A single community toilet serves nearly 850 households. It is overcrowded, poorly maintained, and shuts its gates at midnight—leaving hundreds of families with no safe option till morning. The municipality installed a mobile toilet, but it remains filthy and abandoned.

“No one cleans the community toilet,” Sanjeeda says. “We have to carry water just to enter it, and even then, it is so dirty we try to avoid it.”

Women use the ground floor, men go to the first floor, and both are constantly leaking. Every morning, long queues stretch for hours. This daily wait can take from two to three hours, which women simply cannot spare.

“At night, I never go to the community toilet alone. My husband or one of my sons has to come with me because men who drink and use substances are lurking outside.”

For adolescent girls, the dangers are even more acute. Her 16-year-old daughter finds it frightening to step out after sunset. Many women stay home altogether because they fear harassment, assault, or intimidation.

In Bhim Nagar, something as routine as relieving oneself becomes a moment of fear—showing how deeply gender influences access to sanitation.

With nine family members, using the pay-per-use toilet strains the household budget. “For the nine of us, it costs ₹18 each time,” she says. “If someone needs to go twice, how can we afford that?” These everyday costs pile up quickly. Choosing between food, health, and hygiene becomes normalised.

Poor sanitation also fuels frequent illnesses—diarrhoea, stomach infections, acidity—adding medical expenses and emotional stress. For her school-going children, the long queues at toilets delay their mornings; many reach school late and are turned away. Over time, these missed classes widen the gap between them and their peers.

Access to water is just as difficult. Until 2019, Sanjeeda and her daughters walked long distances to fill 15-kg jars from a distant pipeline. Later, with support from Pani Haq Samiti, five families were able to share a single water connection. But this serves only a small fraction of Bhim Nagar.

Loose pipes, irregular flow, and hundreds of people lining up create daily chaos. Women and girls carry the burden of collecting, storing, and rationing water. This labour is invisible yet essential for the household.

Menstrual hygiene remains one of the biggest challenges for women and girls. “The community toilets are dirty, dark, damp and often lack running water or privacy,” Sanjeeda explains. “During periods, it becomes even more difficult.”

While NGOs and schools distribute sanitary pads and iron tablets, the lack of clean, private toilets undermines their utility. Girls often skip school during their periods, resulting in frequent absences that push many toward dropping out.

Yet the functioning toilets at the school offer some respite and dignity to Sanjeeda’s daughters during the hours that they spend there.

Sanjeeda Khatoon’s story reflects the lived realities of countless families across Mumbai’s informal settlements. Access to sanitation, water, and hygiene is entangled with poverty, gender discrimination, insecure housing, and exclusionary policies.

The Swachh Bharat Mission has brought visibility to sanitation issues, but for communities without tenure rights or space for in-home toilets, its impact remains limited. For women like Sanjeeda, the absence of WASH facilities is not merely an infrastructure/technical gap, but a denial of safety, dignity, health, and equal citizenship.

Access to sanitation affects health, education, livelihood, and social participation. Each long queue, each unsafe walk at night, and each missed school day for a young girl shows how sanitation shapes entire life trajectories.

Real progress within sanitation demands:

• gender-responsive planning,
• secure housing rights,
• community-led solutions, and
• restores the dignity of low-income communities.

Until then, women like Sanjeeda will continue standing in line, waiting not just for a toilet and water, but for the dignity and rights they deserve.

— Nisha Rani, Programme Coordinator, CREA