NextBillion - An Initiative of the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan

Monday, October 28, 2019

By Krishna Reddy

For decades, several individuals and governments have tried to make India an open defecation-free nation, and the work is still in progress.

To give you an insight, about 2.3 billion people across the globe do not have access to basic toilet facilities. In India, this number is about 600 million, of which five million urban slums belong to urban slums.

Since the Narendra Modi government started the Swachh Bharat initiative in 2014, basic sanitation facilities like toilets have been made available in rural and metropolitan cities. However, these toilets may not be of much use, as they are often poorly maintained and vandalised.

Photo courtesy of Shamsheer Yousaf.