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The Throneless...
The faecal matter hits the rotary blades, politically?but we?re still staring at a sanitation disaster
UTTAM SENGUPTA
?Indians defecate everywhere. They defecate mostly besides the railway tracks. But they also defecate on the beaches; they defecate on the hills; they defecate on the river banks; they defecate on the streets; they never look for cover.?
?V.S. Naipaul
An Area of Darkness, 1964
Not to put too fine a point on it, India?s no. 1 problem is no. 2. And for an all-too-brief while last week, the squatting figures dotting the landscape??eternal and emblematic as Rodin?s thinker? in the Nobel laureate?s immortal words?looked set to emerge out of the bushes and shadows in an election season, as the bjp?s Narendra Modi, whose advertised motto is ?India First?, mom*entarily gave flight to his vision of ?Toilet First?.
?My image does not permit me to say so, but my real thought is, ?Pehle shauchalaya, phir devalaya (Toilets first, temples later)?,? Modi said, as he sought to buff up his image as more than just a Hindutva leader. ?It?s a sad situation that our mothers and sisters have to defecate in the open. Villages have hundreds of thousands of temples but no washrooms. This is bad. Gandhiji gave so much importance to this issue.?
Holy [poop]! Had wisdom finally dawned on those sitting on the throne (and those aspiring), 50 years after Naipaul?s whiplash? Union minister Jairam Ramesh had only six months ago said more or less the same thing. That 64 per cent of Indians still do it in the open, a global record. That this is the main cause of India?s malnutrition. And that?hold on to the seat of your pants?this costs the nation $54 billion (Rs 3,24,000 crore) every year in premature deaths and treatment of the sick, wasted time and productivity, and lost tourism revenues.
?There is no use blasting Agni missiles if the sanitation problem is not solved,? Jairam, who confesses he spends most of his waking hours thinking about toilets, said. ?It?s more important than the launch of Agni missiles. If there are no toilets, then Agni is of no use. The price of just one fighter aircraft is enough to free one thousand villages from open defecation.?
...
Toilet Stats
64% of Indians defecate in the open
60% of all open defecations in the world are in India
6.4% of the GDP lost in health costs, productivity losses and reduced tourism revenues
0.02% of India?s GDP accounts for the budgetary allocation for sanitation
8.71 crore (87.1 million) toilets claimed to have been delivered by Total Sanitation Campaign in the last 10 years
5.16 crore (51.6 million) toilets are all that was found to be in existence by the household census
45,000 crore rupees (450 billion) spent on rural sanitation during the last five years
1.08 lakh crore (1.08 trillion) rupees to be spent in the next five years till 2017
The Throneless...
The faecal matter hits the rotary blades, politically?but we?re still staring at a sanitation disaster
UTTAM SENGUPTA
?Indians defecate everywhere. They defecate mostly besides the railway tracks. But they also defecate on the beaches; they defecate on the hills; they defecate on the river banks; they defecate on the streets; they never look for cover.?
?V.S. Naipaul
An Area of Darkness, 1964
Not to put too fine a point on it, India?s no. 1 problem is no. 2. And for an all-too-brief while last week, the squatting figures dotting the landscape??eternal and emblematic as Rodin?s thinker? in the Nobel laureate?s immortal words?looked set to emerge out of the bushes and shadows in an election season, as the bjp?s Narendra Modi, whose advertised motto is ?India First?, mom*entarily gave flight to his vision of ?Toilet First?.
?My image does not permit me to say so, but my real thought is, ?Pehle shauchalaya, phir devalaya (Toilets first, temples later)?,? Modi said, as he sought to buff up his image as more than just a Hindutva leader. ?It?s a sad situation that our mothers and sisters have to defecate in the open. Villages have hundreds of thousands of temples but no washrooms. This is bad. Gandhiji gave so much importance to this issue.?
Holy [poop]! Had wisdom finally dawned on those sitting on the throne (and those aspiring), 50 years after Naipaul?s whiplash? Union minister Jairam Ramesh had only six months ago said more or less the same thing. That 64 per cent of Indians still do it in the open, a global record. That this is the main cause of India?s malnutrition. And that?hold on to the seat of your pants?this costs the nation $54 billion (Rs 3,24,000 crore) every year in premature deaths and treatment of the sick, wasted time and productivity, and lost tourism revenues.
?There is no use blasting Agni missiles if the sanitation problem is not solved,? Jairam, who confesses he spends most of his waking hours thinking about toilets, said. ?It?s more important than the launch of Agni missiles. If there are no toilets, then Agni is of no use. The price of just one fighter aircraft is enough to free one thousand villages from open defecation.?
...
Toilet Stats
64% of Indians defecate in the open
60% of all open defecations in the world are in India
6.4% of the GDP lost in health costs, productivity losses and reduced tourism revenues
0.02% of India?s GDP accounts for the budgetary allocation for sanitation
8.71 crore (87.1 million) toilets claimed to have been delivered by Total Sanitation Campaign in the last 10 years
5.16 crore (51.6 million) toilets are all that was found to be in existence by the household census
45,000 crore rupees (450 billion) spent on rural sanitation during the last five years
1.08 lakh crore (1.08 trillion) rupees to be spent in the next five years till 2017
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