India Failing to Control Open Defecation

And yet they have the capacity to build nuclear weapons and become soft ware engineers in order to work in the US…?

Until May 2007, Meera Devi rose before dawn each day and walked a half mile to a vegetable patch outside the village of Kachpura to find a secluded place.

Dodging leering men and stick-wielding farmers and avoiding spots that her neighbors had soiled, the mother of three pulled up her sari and defecated with the Taj Mahal in plain view.

With that act, she added to the estimated 100,000 tons of human excrement that Indians leave each day in fields of potatoes, carrots and spinach, on banks that line rivers used for drinking and bathing and along roads jammed with scooters, trucks and pedestrians. Devi looks back on her routine with pain and embarrassment.
[snip]

Every year, more than 200 million tons of human sewage goesuncollected and untreated, fouling the environment. Each gram offeces can contain 10 million virus particles, 1 millionbacteria, 1,000 parasite cysts and 100 parasite eggs, the UNfound.

More…

2010-05-28