India: 600,000 Die Annually from 50% Open-Defecation Rrate

Daily Slave
August 11, 2014

india-open-defacation
The cultural vibrancy of open-defecation in India.

The Indian government is still having a problem getting much of their rural population to use toilets.  Instead, many of these people seem to be OK with defecating in open areas which has resulted in the spread of disease.

What’s ridiculous is that the government has even tried to supply these people with toilets and they just won’t use them.

From Digital Journal:

India, a nation with one foot in the present and the other in the past, suffers from a certain kind of pollution largely associated with undeveloped nations.

The populations of entire villages in India still defecate in common-area fields that surround their communities, according to a Bloomberg report out Monday.

The government of India, a world nuclear power, is trying to control disease by potty training rural populations who return to nature when nature calls, even after the government has installed toilets at their homes.

For example, Sunita’s family, who live in the North Indian village of Mukimpur, prefer to do their business on the edge of the jungle next to their farm in a field speckled by flowers where most of the village of 7,000 go to defecate and gossip.
India’s government has been long frustrated by rural citizens who refuse to use government toilets and spread disease throughout their communities.

Sunita , who uses one name, says only dalits, the lowest Hindu caste, ought to be exposed to excrement in a closed space, “or city-dwellers who don’t have space to go in the open.” The 26-year-old mother reportedly made the remarks while washing clothes next to the family’s unused concrete government toilet. “Feces don’t belong under the same roof as where we eat and sleep.”

Hardly an isolated view, the cultural task of toilet-training rural Indians remains one of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s biggest challenges in combating the world’s biggest sanitation problem.