prasad1
Active member
Last week, the Thomson Reuters Foundation outlined how Bangladesh, India's much poorer and flood-prone neighbor, has had more success building bathrooms for its citizens. In just over a decade, Bangladesh managed to decrease the percentage of people defecating in the open from 19 percent in 2000 to just 3 percent in 2012. However, across the border in India the picture is very different. According to the World Bank, over 600 million people, roughly 53 percent of Indian households, still use public streets and fields as bathrooms.
And it's the women of India who are paying the highest price.
Why in 2014 are women and girls in India, the world's largest democracy, facing so much difficulty getting to a bathroom? At the core of this issue is the low position of women in Indian society. It is on their way to and from this journey that they face the risk of horrific, even deadly, attacks of sexual violence. From religion to caste, Indian culture consistently degrades women to the point that they cannot even access the most basic of human rights: to remove bodily wastes with dignity and privacy.
This lack of value placed on the lives of women and girls begins at birth. Three millions girls are considered to be 'missing' in India where female infanticide, the killing of baby girls, is so common that the UN has called it the most dangerous place in the world to be born a girl.
"I believe no woman must lose her life just because she has to go out to defecate," the founder of the charity, Bindeshwar Pathak said.
Building safe toilets for women and girls across India may be the most fitting tribute to those two girls who were denied dignity in life and death. But how India tackles this public health crisis will determine the direction of the women's rights movement in the country for years to come.
Bathroom Break: India's Sanitation Crisis Is Trapping Women in a Cycle of Violence | Anushay Hossain
And it's the women of India who are paying the highest price.
Why in 2014 are women and girls in India, the world's largest democracy, facing so much difficulty getting to a bathroom? At the core of this issue is the low position of women in Indian society. It is on their way to and from this journey that they face the risk of horrific, even deadly, attacks of sexual violence. From religion to caste, Indian culture consistently degrades women to the point that they cannot even access the most basic of human rights: to remove bodily wastes with dignity and privacy.
This lack of value placed on the lives of women and girls begins at birth. Three millions girls are considered to be 'missing' in India where female infanticide, the killing of baby girls, is so common that the UN has called it the most dangerous place in the world to be born a girl.
"I believe no woman must lose her life just because she has to go out to defecate," the founder of the charity, Bindeshwar Pathak said.
Building safe toilets for women and girls across India may be the most fitting tribute to those two girls who were denied dignity in life and death. But how India tackles this public health crisis will determine the direction of the women's rights movement in the country for years to come.
Bathroom Break: India's Sanitation Crisis Is Trapping Women in a Cycle of Violence | Anushay Hossain
