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People urinating in public spaces is a frequent sight in India. But part of this open micturition is caused by a severe lack of public toilets.
Women face the worst of this problem. Not only do they have to encounter men relieving themselves openly, women also struggle to find toilets — clean toilets, especially — where they could do their business without risking their safety or health, sometimes from wild animals and snakes, sometimes from sexual predators.
In rural India, having toilets in one’s house is a bit of a luxury. Women relieve themselves in open fields, thus risking rape and murder.
Bindeshwar Pathak, who founded Sulabh International, the NGO that has been building toilets all over India, says: “Absence of toilets in houses, particularly in rural areas, is behind such incidents of rapes and sexual assaults in villages.”
According to National Crime Records Bureau data, 93 women are raped in India everyday. Imagine the numbers that could have been avoided had some of those women access to toilets.
The crew at Video Daddy did a social experiment with their actor asking directions to the nearest toilet. Since there was none to be found, some people advised her to head to the beach.
The video raises a valid question: can we be truly proud of India’s recent trip to Mars when millions of Indian women can’t even access a toilet?
Watch what happens: