Successive governments in India have covered up the true story of the missing toilets with averages and total numbers. The Modi government claims that it will end open defecation by 2019. Many governments before this one have set similarly ambitious targets. Yet, according to UNICEF, about 65 per cent of rural Indians relieve themselves in the open – sometimes on the road to a graveyard, risking communal tensions and violence. Almost 600 million Indians, mostly in rural areas, are without toilets, a problem that is fast becoming an India-only one.
