Some of the Municipal Corporation of Delhi-run schools are 'horror houses', the Delhi Commission for Women (DCW) remarked after it conducted surprise inspection and found them without adequate security and sanitation facilities.
Bio-toilets developed by the Defence Research and Development Organisation on Tuesday earned praise from Prime Minister Manmohan Singh who said that these could go a long way in solving the problem of open defecation in rural India.
With over 600 million people in India or 53 per cent of Indian households defecating in the open, absence of toilet or latrine is one of the important contributors to malnutrition, a World Bank report has said.
Sanitation is always clubbed with other departments, which lead to its neglect, says Devanik Saha.
For more than half of all Indian households, the very personal act of defecation is an open affair, says Joel Rai
Ending open defecation by 2019 will require changing minds, not just allocating money to build latrines for people that will either go unused or not be built at all.
On the one had are sanitation oriented social enterprises and on the other are awareness raising campaigns by government.
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