IN JEST THIS Melvin Durai
Now, instead of lining up outside the toilet in the morning, let’s head to the nearest plant pot
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For most of us, urine is a waste product that we’re eager to get rid of, whether it’s our own urine or the urine of our pets or livestock. We don’t want to touch it, we don’t want to process it, and we certainly don’t want to drink it.
But, for others, urine is a resource that can be used to improve our lives. The Rajasthan government is the latest proponent of urine as a resource. The state’s health minister Rajendra Rathore recently inaugurated a refinery that can process up to 7,000litres of cow urine a day. I’m not sure how many cows it takes to produce that much urine. Suffice it to say that hundreds of cows will be involved, with the most productive cow being honoured at the end of the year with the “Top Urinator Award.”
The cow urine will be used to make a variety of products, including a cleaning liquid or disinfectant that will be marketed under the trade name of Gocleaner. (They apparently didn’t like my suggestion: Purine.)
As part of a pilot study, Gocleaner will be tested in Sawai Man Singh Hospital, the biggest hospital in Jaipur. It will be used in one ward and a comparison of its results will be made with the results in another ward, where a regular disinfectant is being used. I’m not sure what the study will show, but perhaps the patients whose rooms have been cleaned with Gocleaner will feel healthy and refreshed. “I absolutely love the smell of my room!” one of them will say. “Cow urine is a big improvement over human urine.”
Rathore seems pretty excited about the pilot study. “I will put a team of doctors there to study for a month and we will then be able to establish how effective is the cow urine and if it really works or not,” he told NDTV.
If the results are positive, Rathore intends to make Gocleaner the state’s official hospital cleaning product. And before you know it, people in Rajasthan and other parts of India will be washing their hands with Gocleaner, perhaps even taking baths with it. Watch out, Lux, here’s comes Gocleaner!
That may seem farfetched, but probably not to all the people who believe in the power of urine. You can count India’s transport minister Nitin Gadkari among them. He recently revealed that he collects his urine in a 50-litre can and uses it to fertilize plants at his Delhi home. He has found that plants that receive “urine therapy” grow faster than plants that receive plain water. Gadkari would like everyone to follow his example, but urine collection may not be feasible in every household. However, it may be welcomed by large families that have only one toilet at their disposal. Instead of lining up outside the toilet in the morning, each person can head to the nearest plant pot.
Children are bound to fight, of course.
Nitin: “It’s my turn to fertilize the money plant.”
Raju: “No, it’s my turn. Go fertilize the rubber plant.”
If this catches on, people will have plants beside their beds, so they can fertilize with ease in the middle of the night.
But just as the Rajasthan government is wisely testing the effectiveness of cow urine before using it widely, Gadkari needs to commission a study to test the effectiveness of human urine as a plant fertilizer. Here are some questions I’d like the study to answer:
–Which urine causes plants to grow faster – the transport minister’s urine or the agriculture minister’s urine? What about the minister of chemicals and fertilizers?
— Do politicians have special plant-growing urine powers or can ordinary people also grow plants with their urine?
— Is human urine more effective at growing plants than cow urine? What about dog urine and cat urine?
— Do the leaves of plants grown with cow urine have special healing properties? If so, how soon will they be available in Rajasthan hospitals?
