Devi wanted to spare her daughter the humiliation—and disease—other village women have to endure.
Photographer: Anshika Varma for Bloomberg BusinessweekNew Economy Forum
India’s Women Want a Toilet Revolution
A government campaign to install 110 million toilets is changing where and how citizens relieve themselves.
Meera Devi was an early adopter. In 2007 the mother of three took out a loan to pay for … not an iPhone or a PC, but a squat latrine, the first in the village of Kachhpura, located just across the river from the Taj Mahal.
A privy is a luxury most Westerners take for granted but one the majority of Devi’s neighbors—and approximately 100 million Indians—do without. Instead they brave the elements, snakes, scorpions, and sometimes stick-wielding farmers to relieve themselves in fields and forests and on riverbanks.