An Indian boy defecates in the open in one of New Delhi’s slums. Photograph: AP Photo/Kevin Frayer
Full article: Amartya Sen: India’s dirty fighter | World news | The Guardian.
Amartya Sen: India’s dirty fighter
(Madeleine Bunting, The Guardian, Tuesday 16 July 2013)
“Half of all Indians have no toilet. In Delhi when you build a new condominium there are lots of planning requirements but none relating to the servants having toilets. It’s a combination of class, caste and gender discrimination. It’s absolutely shocking. Poor people have to use their ingenuity and for women that can mean only being able to relieve themselves after dark with all the safety issues that entails,” says Sen, adding that Bangladesh is much poorer than India and yet only 8% don’t have access to a toilet. “This is India’s defective development.”
It’s one of many gigantic failures that have prompted Nobel prize-winning academic Amartya Sen to write a devastating critique of India’s economic boom.
Punkonomics (@DearBalak) 