Toilet
If you visit this site, you’ll discover a lot about toilets. I was there after my friend Robin Khundkar sent me a link to an article “Indian award not going down the toilet”: the government in India has been giving rural households a subsidy of 500 rupees (about 11 dollars) to install a pit, a porcelain basin, and walls. Here’s a quote from the article:
India has been grappling with this problem, in vain, for decades. Mahatma Gandhi said sanitation was “more important than freedom.” Jawarharlal Nehru, the former prime minister, once said, “The day everyone of us gets a toilet to use, I shall know that our country has reached the pinnacle of progress.”
This post is especially for my comrade Vijay Prashad who not only shares my obsession with toilets, but links it forcefully to the goal of political emancipation.
That’s a great toilet website (I too, have a collection of toilet pictures; I feel like every traveler to Asia seems to have at least a few toilet pictures) and a great article. The connections between hygiene and political culture aren’t always clear, but still important.
Comment by alau — April 6, 2006 @ 1:31 pm