India's Toilet Revolution

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.

- Jason Gale & Bibhudatta Pradhan

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.

It’s a daily tax on personal dignity that adds up to a huge cost for national development. The World Bank has estimated that India loses about 6.4 percent of its gross domestic product, or $166 billion annually, to gastrointestinal infections and other health consequences of poor sanitation. Chronically sick workers produce less, live shorter lives, have less savings, and are less able to send their children to university.