“In today’s India, 381 million people a population roughly the size of Western Europe live in rapidly expanding urban areas, and 157 million of those people have nowhere decent to go to the toilet,” it says.
Even though the government has made sanitation a priority, the numbers of urbanites living without sanitation has swelled by 26 million since year 2000 as cities expand at breakneck speed, the report, which examined the problems facing more than 700 million urban dwellers around the world living without decent sanitation, says.
An estimated 100 million of these have no choice but to defecate in the open– using roadsides, railway tracks and even plastic bags, dubbed ‘flying toilets’.
WaterAid’s Director of Programmes & Policy, Avinash Kumar, said India’s rapid and unplanned urbanisation has resulted in various developmental challenges.
“… Current rates of urbanisation and meeting the increasing demand for basic services may make achieving Sustainable Development Goals a problem,” he said.
Kumar said there was a vital need for an integrated approach towards urban planning that prioritises provision of basic services like clean water, safe sanitation and sustainable faecal sludge management by ensuring people’s participation.
“This is the only way to create a healthier and more sustainable future,” he said.
(Sourced from agencies, feature image courtesy:practicalaction.org)
