India to put an end to public defecating

If you travel through India there’s a couple of bodily-function issues you might notice (outside your own, that is). One is that there’s a large poor population that doesn’t have access to any form of plumbing. Railroad tracks tend to become the local slum toilet — at least that’s what I noticed while traveling by rail. The other is that areas where public toilets are in place, the stench is often overwhelming (I’m thinking back to some roadside urinals I constantly passed en route to my guesthouse in Delhi).

The World Health Organization estimates that 2.6 million people live without access to a proper toilet, and more than half that number live in India. It’s difficult to imagine a solution to a problem that huge, but India is working on it. The government aims to eradicate “open-air defecating” by 2012, promised Rural Development Minister Raghuvansh Prasad at the World Toilet Summit.

Only problem is, he didn’t say how.

Read the report here.

India’s Hosting the World Toilet Summit

This headline sounds like it’s a joke, but it’s actually quite serious — The World Toilet Summit has plans to convene in New Delhi later this month to discuss the john, the throne, the bog, the loo — whatever you call it, it’s where most of us do our business.

But it’s the ‘most of us’ part that’s troubling the WTS — they’d like to make toilets accessible to everyone by 2025. A lofty goal? Maybe. But it would make the world a safer place — defecating in open places is one of the biggest ways that fatal diseases are spread. And it would sure make travelling a lot more fun for westerners who are particular about where they spend a penny.

So I have to wonder — by toilets, do they mean actual sit down toilets? Or are squatties considered toilets? I’ve seen some very nice squatties in my travels, but none is as welcoming as a loo like the one at home.

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