Depending on where you are, it may still be November 19th for you and that's World Toilet Day. Next time you flush, or perhaps ponder flushing a bit later to conserve water, think on this.
Source: https://www.yahoo.com/news/world-toi...123129947.htmlWorld Toilet Day is about inspiring action to tackle the global sanitation crisis. Today, 4.5 billion people live without a household toilet that safely disposes of their waste.
The Sustainable Development Goals, launched in 2015, include the goal of ensuring that everyone have access to a safely managed household toilet by 2030. This makes decent sanitation central to eradicating extreme poverty.
In 2013, the United Nations General Assembly officially designated Nov. 19 as World Toilet Day, which is coordinated by UN-Water in collaboration with governments and partners.
Warning: Article has a slideshow that may not be the first thing you want to click through in the morning
The opening picture in the slideshow is a guy in Amritsar, which reminded me that this has been a major undertaking for Modi and that caused me to check to see how that's working out. The World Toilet Day articles failed to do the problem justice, but here's one to ponder: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...7c32&tid=a_inl
It's a somewhat long article, so let me skip down a ways:A woman in India just won a divorce because her husband failed to provide her a toilet. That’s huge.
There’s a newly released Bollywood film about a woman in India who left her husband for failing to provide a toilet. It’s called, “Toilet: Ek Prem Katha” in Hindi, which translates to “Toilet: A Love Story.” It’s based on the true story of Anita Narre, whose protest against defecating outside not only ultimately got her husband to build a toilet with government aid but inspired what the Indian press called a “toilet revolution” in her village in the state of Madhya Pradesh.
The film is described as a “satirical love story.”
But there isn’t much humor in the premise it describes.
First-time visitors to India, having read of the country’s technological prowess, are often surprised to learn that some 60 percent of the country’s households lack access to toilets. (There’s no app for that.) In rural areas, but also in many urban enclaves, they will see men just doing it in the road or in fields visible from the roads in broad daylight. They are much less likely to see women going outside, not because they don’t, but because modesty dictates that they do it in the dark of night, exposing them not only to inconvenience, indignity and disease but rape.
The situation is so bad that some years ago, public health advocates launched a “No toilet, No bride” campaign. Women were urged to refuse marriage unless the perspective husband furnished their home with a bathroom.
Now women have another possible incentive to offer husbands who can, but won’t, provide proper toilets: divorce.
So, what are your thoughts? I always find this kind of disconnect jarring, that we hear about technological progress and yet social issues like this remain and show the lingering influence of the caste system.The long-standing problem, as the judge suggested, is no longer so much that people can’t provide toilets. The government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi has reportedly succeeded in adding millions to the nation’s inventory.
Getting some people to use them, especially in the villages, is also an issue. One of the reasons, as The Washington Post’s Rama Lakshmi reported, is a caste system in which cleaning toilets is the job of the lowest on the rung and having a toilet in the home is, by association, considered unclean.
The government has run ads on billboards seeking to shame men into action. One of the ads pictured a child, as The Post reported, saying “Uncle, you wear a tie around your neck, shoes on your feet, but you still defecate in the open. What kind of progress is this?” Another said: “You may have a smartphone in your hand, but you still squat on train tracks.”