Foreign Correspondent - 04/07/2006: India - Untouchables
For those who missed last week's Foreign Correspondent, the link above is to a transcript of the story on toilets in India. (Or more particularly, about the lack of toilets there.)
Some extracts:
BORMANN: It’s staggering that in a country of one billion people 80 percent don’t have a toilet and most in cities and towns aren’t connected to a sewage system anyway. That’s eight hundred million people going in the open in rivers, under bridges, anywhere they might hope to get some privacy.
The footage showed that indeed there is little privacy there. Not much sign of toilet paper for the poor masses either.
The story showed the undertouchable woman whose job it was to clean out the "toilets" in some houses. These were accessed from an external hatch, with the poor woman covering the poop with some dust, putting it in a bucket, then going a short distance and putting in an open running gutter/drain in the street!
Oddly enough, said a woman from a charity that specifically is all about building toilets:
It’s not that this is a poor man’s problem, in many places people have the money to build houses but they do not think it necessary to create a toilet or to construct a toilet.
I don't mean to sound too impolite, but compared to the rest of the world, it's kinda taking a long time for this idea to catch on , isn't it?
The story also featured an odd man in a toilet museum. His funniest line was:
The day you give a clean toilet to a lady she will never go on the road to do this thing.
I'm pretty sure any man will go for the toilet over using the river, too.
India in many respects sounds a very interesting place to visit. I assume that smell is not one of them, though.
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