Ever wondered where all your morning (or umm…evening) shit goes when we flush it down? Who takes care of it: the waste management system or it finds its way to the dump yards? Well, if you’re as curious about this as much as I am, don’t worry. Here comes Buland Babu to answer all your poop queries!
Bengaluru-based organization Consortium for DEWATS (Decentralised Wastewater Treatment Systems) Dissemination Society or CDD Society has recently published a comic book, A Sludge Story. This comic book talks about the city, Buland and Buland Babu is a common man and the protagonist who wants nothing but the best for his city.
The copies of the comic book, which was launched by CDD Society in February this year, were shared with multiple Urban Local Bodies (ULBs) across Karnataka and Tamil Nadu, and have received good reviews from both the states. All the initial 500 copies, which were on display at CDD Society’s stall, during the fecal sludge management conference FSM4 held at Chennai in February, all the copies were sold and soon, upon request, another batch of 500 copies were reprinted. Some of these copies have also reached the schools and colleges as the organisation especially wants to focus on the students.
“We want to reach out to schools and colleges as much as possible because maximum development is important, raising awareness on sanitation issues is very crucial for their future,” Tarika Vaswani, a CDD Society member told to The Better India.
The comic book will not just deal with neglected issues like open defecation and the lack of proper human waste management, it will also focus on engaging and educating its reader about the same. This comic book will also try to explain the current situation of human waste management in India and explain the harmful consequences that both the environment as well as us humans will face.
CDD Society along with the Twist Open Innovations, a design studio, worked upon the idea and thus was born ‘The Adventures of Buland Babu’.
“The idea of addressing these issues on a broader prospective had been going on for almost a year. Developing the concept in the comic book format seemed fresh,” Tarika said, adding that while a few cities now have the facilities of underground sewerage and human waste management plants, many places in the country still rely on septic tanks and pits. And once these tanks and pits fill up, the waste is collected and mostly dumped into water bodies or open fields.
The initial chapters of the comic talks about the human waste management and tells us how the citizens of Buland tackle this “situation” successfully.
But but, since the comic is talks about the “adventures” of Buland Babu, does it mean that there’s more stored for us than what the initial chapters talk about?
“We are working on something. Looks like Buland Babu might be up to something if you read the comic book carefully!” Tarika said in the same report.
The CDD society has successfully set up a faecal sludge treatment plant (FSTP) in Devannahalli and currently, handles 100% of the region’s sludge.
You can get in touch with the CCD Society here: bangalore@cddindia.org.
