{"componentChunkName":"component---src-templates-post-query-tsx","path":"/blog-post/asking-dirty-questions-in-bihar/","result":{"pageContext":{"post":{"slug":"/blog-post/asking-dirty-questions-in-bihar/","title":"Asking dirty questions in Bihar","date":"Dec 02, 2013","timeToRead":3,"description":"","body":"function _extends() { _extends = Object.assign || function (target) { for (var i = 1; i < arguments.length; i++) { var source = arguments[i]; for (var key in source) { if (Object.prototype.hasOwnProperty.call(source, key)) { target[key] = source[key]; } } } return target; }; return _extends.apply(this, arguments); }\n\nfunction _objectWithoutProperties(source, excluded) { if (source == null) return {}; var target = _objectWithoutPropertiesLoose(source, excluded); var key, i; if (Object.getOwnPropertySymbols) { var sourceSymbolKeys = Object.getOwnPropertySymbols(source); for (i = 0; i < sourceSymbolKeys.length; i++) { key = sourceSymbolKeys[i]; if (excluded.indexOf(key) >= 0) continue; if (!Object.prototype.propertyIsEnumerable.call(source, key)) continue; target[key] = source[key]; } } return target; }\n\nfunction _objectWithoutPropertiesLoose(source, excluded) { if (source == null) return {}; var target = {}; var sourceKeys = Object.keys(source); var key, i; for (i = 0; i < sourceKeys.length; i++) { key = sourceKeys[i]; if (excluded.indexOf(key) >= 0) continue; target[key] = source[key]; } return target; }\n\n/* @jsxRuntime classic */\n\n/* @jsx mdx */\nvar _frontmatter = {\n  \"title\": \"Asking dirty questions in Bihar\",\n  \"date\": \"2013-12-02\",\n  \"template\": \"post\",\n  \"slug\": \"asking-dirty-questions-in-bihar\",\n  \"postedLink\": \"https://riceinstitute.org/blog/asking-dirty-questions-in-bihar/\",\n  \"old-tags\": [\"bihar\", \"open-defecation\", \"sanitation-2\"],\n  \"description\": \"\",\n  \"tags\": \"Blog Post\",\n  \"banner\": \"\"\n};\nvar layoutProps = {\n  _frontmatter: _frontmatter\n};\nvar MDXLayout = \"wrapper\";\nreturn function MDXContent(_ref) {\n  var components = _ref.components,\n      props = _objectWithoutProperties(_ref, [\"components\"]);\n\n  return mdx(MDXLayout, _extends({}, layoutProps, props, {\n    components: components,\n    mdxType: \"MDXLayout\"\n  }), mdx(\"p\", null, \"For the second morning running, I am pleased to report, Aashish\\u2019s and my team here in Darbhanga, Bihar has beat Sangita, Nikhil, and Diane\\u2019s team in Rewari, Haryana in getting out the door and surveying in the morning. To be fair, I must confess that yesterday we won only by a nose: Diane made the mistake of calling to taunt us that they were all in the jeep and ready to go, but hadn\\u2019t yet started. As her luck would have it, we, too, were all in the jeep. I shouted to turn on the car, the final condition for victory by the rules of our contest. I wish all the best to the other team for tomorrow morning \\u2013 really, you would think they would have a good chance, as we have the handicap of an extra surveyor. And, you know, Bihar.\"), mdx(\"p\", null, \"In other important business, we have a great set of surveyors who are getting a good job done. We\\u2019re in the first districts of a project that will take us to 8 states in Hindi-speaking north India over the next few months. It is a hard survey: we\\u2019re not merely trying to learn what people have or what they do. We\\u2019re trying to learn what they think, want, and believe.\"), mdx(\"p\", null, \"What people really think is hard to learn about for all of the ordinary reasons that it is hard to learn about in everyday life. It is sometimes, for example, impossible to get anyone in my family to say where they want to go for dinner, for fear of imposing their preferences on the rest of us. Sometimes, we have the opposite problem. Or, consider a friend with a new haircut \\u2013 are you really going to declare that you don\\u2019t like it? What if it is not a friend, but a visitor, a special guest, who has come a long way to learn about you and what you think? Chances are you\\u2019re going to try to be nice, or useful, or friendly, or maybe just say whatever you think is going to make you look good.\"), mdx(\"p\", null, \"So, our basic strategy is to hide the fact that we\\u2019re interested in sanitation and latrines for the first half of the survey. We don\\u2019t lie. We simply ask about all sorts of bits of village life \", mdx(\"em\", {\n    parentName: \"p\"\n  }, \"in addition to\"), \" sanitation. We end up getting the respondents talking about their opinions on quite a lot of village life \\u2013 indeed, we call it a \\u201Cvillage life survey.\\u201D Do you think that children would be healthier in a village where people eat wheat or where they eat rice, or does it not matter? \", \"[\", \"so far, I have not seen anyone think that this does not matter.\", \"]\", \" What about cooking fuel \\u2013 do you think children would be healthier if people burned gas, or dried cow poop to cook over? What about if most people use latrines, or most people go in the open, or does that not matter?\"), mdx(\"p\", null, \"One measure of our success is that people are willing to tell us \\u2013 fancy strangers here from the district capital city to interview you \\u2013 that open defecation is good for you, that latrines don\\u2019t really matter, and that finding human poop laying around isn\\u2019t really that disgusting, anyway. For example, on the very first day of practice surveying last week in Uttar Pradesh:\"), mdx(\"ul\", null, mdx(\"li\", {\n    parentName: \"ul\"\n  }, \"Only 45 percent of respondents said that children are healthier in villages that use latrines; a full 41 percent said that they are healthier where people defecate in the open.\"), mdx(\"li\", {\n    parentName: \"ul\"\n  }, \"Fully 82 percent said that they would find a dirty dog in their house more disgusting than encountering human poop on the ground. (Would you? Lizzie, Allie, Laura, Doug, Juan, I\\u2019m looking in your direction\\u2026)\"), mdx(\"li\", {\n    parentName: \"ul\"\n  }, \"Almost nobody says they particularly want a latrine who doesn\\u2019t have one, when given a hypothetical choice among other exciting options like a cooking pot, electric fan, or black and white TV. Contrast this with the answer you would get by walking up and asking somebody if they want a latrine: \\u201CYou bet! When will you deliver it?\\u201D\")), mdx(\"p\", null, \"There is about 73 pages\\u2019 more to the survey than this. In particular, we\\u2019ll be able to look at differences across social and demographic groups, and across places, in who thinks and does what. And we\\u2019ll be able to look at the relationship between what people think and what they do. We will know a lot of detail about how exactly people get their latrines and what they make them out of once they decide to switch. And we will have a pretty good idea of what the government, non-profits, and businesses have to do with it \\u2013 or don\\u2019t. In some cases we have a pretty good guess about what we are going to find, but I am sure there will be surprises and puzzles. We will keep you posted!\"));\n}\n;\nMDXContent.isMDXComponent = true;","tags":[{"name":"Blog Post","slug":"blog-post"}],"banner":null}}},"staticQueryHashes":["318001574","3787687951","3787687951"]}