Kumbh Mela: worth learning from
In India, there are just nine hospital beds for every 10,000 people; 626m people are forced to defecate in the open for want of sanitary facilities; and local investors are looking abroad to escape unpredictable regulation and unreliable infrastructure at home.
And yet, when religion and revelry are at stake, this same country can pull it together and host the 55-day Maha Kumbh Mela festival, where 9m pilgrims are provided with all the shelter and services they need. Continue reading »
Splashing out: India’s new toilet outcry
For the second time in just over a month, India has been hit with a toilet scandal – but instead of a vast network of bureaucrats and middlemen filching over a billion dollars across the country, this one involves an elite economic policy arm of the government.
India’s Planning Commission is no stranger to controversy – last year, it came up with a novel approach to reducing the number of poor people in India: it lowered the poverty line to Rs26 (47 cents) a day.
This week it emerged that the folks determining who is poor enough to qualify for government subsidies are enjoying their own sort of government largesse, not with fancy cars or large mansions, but with toilets – $54,000 worth to be exact. Continue reading »
India: revolution in toilet technology
In India, it is easier to get access to a mobile phone than it is to get to a toilet. But soon this could change.
Anders Wilhelmson, a Swedish architect, professor and informal urban planning expert, has come up with a product to raise the standards of personal hygiene in a country where only 31 per cent of the 1.18bn population has access to proper sanitation. Continue reading »
Second-rate bureaucrats hold India back
Indians like to be as clean as anyone else.
So a suggestion by a top Indian Commonwealth Games official that Indians are content with cleanliness standards lower than those insisted upon by their more picky international brethren is breathtaking in its mediocrity. Continue reading »
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