India, the world’s second-largest country by population, has the highest number of people (732 million) without access to toilets, according to a new report.
The report by WaterAid, titled Out Of Order: The State of the World’s Toilets 2017, further stated that 355 million women and girls lack access to a toilet. If they were to stand in a line, the queue could circle the Earth more than four times.
India’s low ranking on the sanitation index is despite the changes brought by the government’s Swachh Bharat (Clean India) Mission. Launched in October 2014, it increased the country’s sanitation coverage from 39% to 65% by November 2017, according to government data. In this period, 52 million household toilets were built in rural India.
The cleanliness campaign has reduced the proportion of people defecating in the open by 40%, meaning more than 100 million people now use toilets, according to the WaterAid report.
India also ranks sixth among the top ten nations working to reduce open defecation and improving access to basic sanitation. The percentage of population without access to at least basic sanitation fell from 78.3% in 2000 to 56% in 2015, according to the report. Read More Here
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