MUMBAI, INDIA—A growing number of states in India are imposing a new requirement on candidates for local office: They must use a toilet.
The western state of Maharashtra this past week became the latest to pass a law requiring those running in municipal and village-level elections to present proof that they have access to working toilets. Five Indian states — with combined populations of nearly 400 million people, or roughly one-third of the country — have enacted similar legislation over the past two years.
That’s no small demand in a country in which an estimated 40 per cent of people, including more than half in rural areas, lack access to safe, functioning commodes, according to WaterAid, a charity. In much of rural India, most people still defecate in the open due to a lack of toilets and widespread traditional beliefs that it is more wholesome to go outdoors.
Open defecation, however, has been linked to chronic diarrhea and other diseases that lead to stunted growth in children, as well as to violence against women who must leave their homes to relieve themselves.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has launched a “Clean India” campaign that aims to end open defecation and install 110 million toilets nationwide by 2019. Four of the five states that have introduced laws requiring local political candidates to use toilets are led by Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party.
State officials say they want local office-holders to serve as role models in following modern sanitation practices.
“It is high time to have this basic amenity at home,” said Maharashtra’s chief minister, Devendra Fadnavis, a Modi ally. “We are also promoting the Swachh Bharat (Clean India) campaign. We want to make each and every village and city clean and garbage-free.”
http://www.thestar.com/news/world/2016/04/02/some-political-candidates-in-india-must-prove-they-use-a-toilet.html
The bill Fadnavis initially proposed last fall would have required every local candidate to have a working toilet at home. That prompted resistance from some opposition parties, which said it would disqualify many poor candidates as well as those living in urban areas who use shared public toilets.
In Mumbai, India’s second-most populous city and the largest in Maharashtra, one-third of municipal office-holders belonging to the powerful Shiv Sena party reside in slums that have shared toilets, said a party official, Anil Parab.
The state government relented and the law passed would allow people to contest elections if they produced a certificate showing they had access to a functioning toilet.
But an independent state lawmaker, Kapil Patil, slammed the law as unconstitutional, saying any Indian adult should be able to run for office without conditions.
“Is it not insulting to submit such a letter before applying for the candidature?” Patil said in an interview.
“Where I go to attend nature’s call cannot be anybody else’s business. The government’s responsibility is to provide toilets to everyone. One cannot hold the candidate responsible for the lack of toilets in the state.”
Some who support the effort to improve sanitation also criticized the law for driving a wedge between rural Indians and those living in urban areas, roughly 80 per cent of whom have access to toilets, according to WaterAid.
“The bill polarizes the candidates between rich and poor,” said Kiran Pawaskar, an opposition state lawmaker. “The intent is good but the law is bad.”
Opponents of such legislation in other states have had mixed success. In February, the government in the northern state of Bihar, which is not allied with Modi, withdrew a law requiring candidates in local elections to have toilets in their homes, saying the state had fallen short of its promises to build more toilets.
Last June, a court in the western state of Gujarat, which is led by Modi’s party, rejected a challenge to a similar policy, ruling that office-holders should serve as “role models” for citizens.
“The states have the flexibility to make their own policies and rules, and it’s good that they’re trying to work in that spirit,” said Nitya Jacob, head of policy at WaterAid India. But Jacob said states should work harder on implementing the central government’s ambitious sanitation plans.
The laws “are more symbolic than anything else. It sends a message that this is important and you need to have a toilet.”
Part of the problem, Jacob and others say, is that while India has become better at building toilets, it has not had as much success getting people to use them. Many brand-new toilets lie unused due to drought or a lack of piped water. In some areas, local officials have not carried out adequate education campaigns to increase toilet use.
The cultural barriers remain significant. In a recent paper, researchers Anurag Banerjee, Nilanjan Banik and Ashvika Dalmia used Indian demographic survey data to rank 21 basic consumer goods in the order that Indian households would prefer to acquire them. According to their analysis, toilets ranked 12th — meaning a poor family would buy a television, a pressure cooker or a motorcycle before it acquired a toilet.
Obligatory
>poo in loo
and
>D E S I G N A T E D
Memes are coming to life!
>>36385
The magic is real. Turks with antennae soon.
>>36387
And leafs with dicks permantly implanted in their asses
>>36375
Meme magic is powerful sorcery indeed.
They must be getting tired of being the butt of every shitty joke
>be Indian poo-litician
>get impeached for not having my toilet license
>get a fierce finger-wagging for raping a low-caste woman
Modernization sucks!
>>toilets ranked 12th — meaning a poor family would buy a television, a pressure cooker or a motorcycle before it acquired a toilet.
Fuckin priorities. Sounds like trailer park priorities; at least public housing has Buffalo Butt Buchmann to replace toilet.
being an indian I can say india sucks cocks, and im from the good part of india.
>>36377
A pressure cooker? That implies they have electricity, but no toilet? What the fuck do you need a pressure cooker for?
Can we all just admit that the world need India's designated streets to help cut down their massive population problem?
>>36498
China had a one child policy for 35 years and it has just begun to be phased out
I think India could do with a no child policy for that period of time
>>36551
Wow, I get your point but it's not well thought out.
That would create a 35 years gap with no population growth.
In years to come, when these childless adults reach old age, who is going to look after them? Their children? The state (who will have a plunging tax-take)?
What about the rest of the world that increasingly enjoys exporting to India now? Who in India, when the childless age gap kicks in, will be able to afford to buy our products?
Does India even have enough water to feasibly provide functioning indoor toilets to everyone? Their population continues to grow extremely fast and they're already at over 1.2 billion.
>>36498
Why the fuck would you need electricity for a pressure cooker?
>>36684
He might be thinking of an electric rice cooker
>>36551
>China had a one child policy for 35 years and it has just begun to be phased out
China's old pop keeps growing,pressure on budget.
Fertility rates are under replacement level.
Middle class rising.
Girls are aborted.
Working age population migrates to Africa,South America and all of Asia to colonize that shit.
Prices and cost of living keeps rising,along with wages.
Jobs are flying out of China,slowly,but steadly.
Rural China is set to disappear as a government policy.
Autonomy regarding production of food is no longer possible because of polluted land and high population.
China produces and grows many things it can't sell to its own people.
India will soon experience everything negative China did without the positives though.
Cost of living goes up,shit jobs,little growth,little inovation,corrupt.
India will only have services,producing little to nothing,agriculture is currently destroying land.
Their ferility rates had fallen harder than chinese ones did.
I just can't wait to see China with Japan level birthrates,Germany tier industry and a median age of 65.
>>36566
I thought it was an obvious case of absurdity humor ("hyperbole")
>>36375
>indiands are restricting their designated pooing spaces to toilets only, but to politicians for now
It's a glorious victory over dysentry
