“Half of the homes in world’s largest democracy have cellphones, but no toilets”

India, which boosts to be the world’s largest democracy, has a pitiable record when it comes to providing basic amenities to its people to let them live a respectful life. Half of the country’s population is devoid of the basic necessities of life like good quality food, clean drinkable water, electricity, proper medical and sanitation facilities, and competent education system. Numbers are staggering and highly shocking when it comes to the availability of the sanitary facilities for the people living in the country.


 Half of the homes in the country don’t have toilets as people are forced to defecate outside in the open, leading to some serious health issues. This open defecation of human excreta not only leads to the generation of harmful bacteria and germs, which further result in serious health problems among people but also degrades the quality of the soil and pollutes the environment. According to a recent UN report, India constitutes more than 60% of the world’s population who defecate in the open. It boggles our mind beyond a permissible limit when we consider that most of these toilet deprived homes have access to cellphones. What’s the use of these cellphones when people are forced to excrete in the open, violating the sanctity of women and letting people especially children die because of the infection induced from open defecation.


The situation becomes more and more grim as you go into the interior regions of the country. These open defecations give birth to manual scavenging, which is considered as the worst form of punishment. Despite the stringent anti- manual scavenging act passed by the govt. of India, manual scavenging is still very much persistent in certain parts of the country. Ineffective implementation of the anti-manual scavenging act and the absence of the comprehensive policies from the govt. for providing free sanitary services to the poor have been cited as the main reasons for the inability in putting an end to manual scavenging.


In the last two years, things have started to improve as ministry of rural development has become more proactive in handling issues related with sanitation. A campaign “no toilets, no bride” was started last year by the minister of rural development, Mr. Jairam Ramesh, where he exhorted women living in rural areas not to marry in families where there were no toilets. More emphasis is now being given to the issues related with sanitation and the need for toilet equipped homes. Bringing in Ms. Vidya Balan as the brand ambassador for the rural development has helped in promoting the cause further.


This changed attitude on the part of our govt. augurs well for India, who for long has suffered with sanitation related issues. India’s sanitation and toilets statistics will continue to raise stinks unless some drastic measures are taken up. In this 21^st century, India continues to lag behind in 17^th century when it comes to providing sanitation facilities for the people. We all hope that these statistics change soon.