No more pissing away opportunity

It is strange how the simplest of solutions stare us in the face and we tend to ignore them. But not anymore, in India, there is rejuvenated interest in "piss" and all its beneficial by-products. The way things are going India will soon become, if not the only but certainly, the leading manufacturer and consumer of urine products. A whole new industry is waiting to be born based in and around urine. From fertiliser to cleaning agents to medicinal uses, India is poised on the cusp of fantastic revolution. After the tremendous successes of the green and white varieties, there is now the yellow one, in the offing.

Reading the morning newspapers today was the revelation, different dailies covered different aspects, of how India is putting urine to good use. Like former Prime Minister Morarji Desai once did, the current minister of Road, Transport and Highways, Nitin Gadkari, is preaching urine to his followers. The difference is that for Morarji Bhai it was a totally personal sort of therapy, but Gadkari does not care to drink urine for his own well being. He is using his precious discharge to charge his garden - one small garden today for the benefit of the country tomorrow.

The news report that I read in one of the leading dailies went on to say how the minister keeps a 20 litre drum at his residence to store urine and then "waters" his garden with that. Apparently, even in the scorching summer heat of Delhi, his garden is blooming. I would have been eager to know more about the modus operandi of the process, but no further details were given, possibly on account of national secrecy or maybe because of the potential of having the process patented.

I, however, did wonder about certain technical issues that Gadkari must be facing. Firstly the capacity of the drum – filling 20 litres in one day is a steep task, how does the minister manage? Does he fill the drum on his own or does he make anybody who comes a visiting, contribute to the endeavour. If the latter happens then isn’t there the chance of contamination? Vegetarian urine might be mixing with non-vegetarian, maybe even a beef-eating person’s urine, and will that not make the product toxic?

The other question that kept bugging me was how does he actually fill the drum? Does one directly discharge into it or is there some storage and filtration process? Do you let the urine stand for a few hours to ferment or can it be used directly? Sadly, all these scientific questions were not answered, though the report did quote Gadkari as saying how this is all very scientific because urine has a lot of urea and nitrogen that is good for the plants. The minister was strangely silent on sulphur and other toxic components found in urine, he also did not comment on why he uses a drum and does not urinate directly on his plants, wouldn’t that have been so much easier?

Talking of toxicity, hospitals in Rajasthan are soon to be disinfected and cleaned with cow urine. The idea, according to a newspaper, was originally put forward by Women and Child Development minister and animal rights activist Maneka Gandhi in March this year. It has now found favour in government hospitals in Rajasthan. Gandhi is quoted to having then said, "No harm to janitors by way of daily exposure to chemicals, and cows will be valued more." She was speaking after reports that government offices in New Delhi might replace phenyl with "Gaunyle", derived from cow urine and carrying the fragrance of neem and pine.

To begin with, the unique product will be used in Jaipur’s Sawai Man Singh (SMS) Hospital, the state’s premier hospital attached with the SMS Medical College. Again, reading this report made me wonder on how this innocuous piece of information must have sent multi-nationals, from Beijing to Louisiana, into a tizzy because billions of dollars are at stake here. Is there then the likelihood of [James Bond style] international corporate espionage agents, in the guise of tourists, trying to infiltrate cow sheds in Jaipur and Jodhpur? At research labs, in places like Guangdong or Nashville, they must already be experimenting with cow feed. A controlled group of cows may at this moment be feeding on varying combinations of neem and pine cones, to derive the correct fragrance in their urine.

But in India, with its age old traditions and its emphasis on tradition based knowledge, the exact mixture of neem to pine cones must have been written down somewhere, in some holy text perhaps, and that is what the present government must have dug up, to produce "Gaunyle". This must all be part of the greater ‘Make in India" project.

I figured that procuring of raw material, for this nascent industry and its proper hygienic storage, must be of paramount importance. My mind was put to rest when I read that India is all set to institutionalise the process of urine collection. The country’s first, and the worlds only, modern cow urine refinery and bank is already functional. According to a local Rajasthan broadsheet, the state health minister, Rajendra Rathore inaugurated it in Badsam village, Sanchore in Rajasthan. The minister said that further research on cow urine will be done and ways will be found to use it in medical treatment. As for the cow urine refinery, a recently formed company Parthvimeda Gau Pharma Private Limited has marked out the procurement area from where to source the raw material.

Villages all around the refinery are excited about the prospect of supplying cow urine, at a fair and fixed price, to the refinery. The promoters of the company must have studied the milk collection system at Anand, which set off the white revolution in India, to effectively remodel it to suit the collection of urine. Urine cooperatives would be formed and urine collection booths would be set up in each village. The villagers would bring the cows directly to the booths or bring urine collected in special cooperative sanctioned urns. At the booth, the urine would be tested by trained officers of the urine cooperatives and depending on their quality and quantity payment would be made to individual members of the cooperative. The collection would happen twice, once at dawn and once at dusk. There would be special urine collection tankers that would make the rounds of the collection booths – collecting urine and taking it to the refinery that would work 24/7 refining cow piss into beneficial products.

Thousands would find employment and soon, as "Amul" became, maybe a new brand called "Gomutra" would become a bigger household name in India. The population would be educated through a massive media campaign on the beneficial uses of urine. New generation filmmakers would rise to immortalise the premier urine cooperative of India…like what Shyam Benegal did to Kaira District Co-operative Milk Producers' Union Limited, or Amul, with Manthan.

Soon the initiative would be replicated all over the country and ‘Gomutra’ outlets would open in every town and city of India. Urine in various forms would be sold in flexi packs and dispensed on automatic vending machines. Small bottles of extra pure cow urine would be sold at a premium. Advertising campaigns would launch with tag lines like – "Go India Gomutra" or "India moves on Gomutra" or "Proud to be an Indian, proud to use Gomutra"

I put down today’s newspapers reassured on two fronts. First that India would be a cleaner place because the Swach Bharat Abhiyan would dove tail into the "Yellow Revolution". With urine at a premium no one would waste it on a city wall, much better to bottle it and send it to the road transport minister. And secondly, that China would never be able to maintain its economic lead over India.

Urine is the new gold and India’s secret to world economic domination.

With a combined human and cattle population of over five billion potential urine producers, India is overflowing with this natural resource and this is one opportunity that Bharat is certainly not going to let go, down the drain.