MUMBAI - NO ONE would ever call Radha Jagarya fortunate. The 45-year-old widow and her four children live on the pavement in an upmarket south Mumbai suburb, scraping a living by selling flowers to passing motorists.
But in terms of public toilet provision, the family is well-served compared with other areas, with an adequate communal block a five-minute walk away near the US Consulate and another under a busy road in the opposite direction.
In slum areas, where more than half of Mumbai lives, an average 81 people share a single toilet. In some places it rises to an eye-watering 273. Even the lowest average is still 58, according to local municipal authority figures.
Unsurprisingly, it is still common to see people squatting by roads and railway tracks or along the coast, openly defecating in the city that drives India's economy and where some of the world's richest people live. The UN estimates that 600 million people or 55 per cent of Indians still defecate outside, more than 60 years after the scrupulously clean independence leader Mahatma Gandhi first talked of the responsible disposal of human waste.
Jack Sim takes a very keen interest in such matters. As the founder and president of the World Toilet Organization (WTO), he has made it his mission to improve sanitation across the globe.
For him, India has 'a lot of work to do' to improve sanitation, not just because of its impact on health and the spread of diseases like diarrhoea, which Unicef says kills 1,000 Indian children aged under five every day, and cost the Indian economy 12 billion rupees (S$357 million) a year, according to the health ministry. -- AFP
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