For India, Toilets Are a (Mostly) Serious Issue
Akshay Kumar, 49, who is one of Bollywood’s most bankable actors
and also a celebrity ambassador for the government’s Clean India campaign, said he chose to play the lead in "Toilet" because it highlighted the problems so many women face.
India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi, troubled by how many Indians still relieve
themselves in the open, has vowed to build a staggering 100 million new toilets.
Just this month, for instance, in one of those instances of life imitating art imitating life, a woman in the state
of Rajasthan demanded a divorce from her husband, partly because he had failed to provide her with a toilet.
All across the country, new latrines are going up, sometimes so fast they are not connected to anything, creating toilets to nowhere
that are so fly-ridden and stinky that almost no one will use them.
Several businessmen in New Delhi said government agencies are in such a rush
that they are awarding contracts left and right with little oversight and often to businesses that know nothing about sanitation.
3, 2017
NEW DELHI — The most popular movie in India this summer is about a toilet.
"I just didn’t look forward to visiting my grandmother for fear of being herded out in the fields to defecate." According to Unicef, around 564 million
Indians, nearly half the population, still defecate in the open — in fields, forests, next to ponds, along highway medians and on the beach.
