In India, more cell phones than toilets

[Newsjock]

Source: Associated Press

The Mumbai slum of Rafiq Nagar has no clean water for its shacks made of ripped tarp and bamboo. No garbage pickup along the rocky, pocked earth that serves as a road. No power except from haphazard cables strung overhead illegally.

And not a single toilet or latrine for its 10,000 people.

Yet nearly every destitute family in the slum has a cell phone. Some have three.

When President Barack Obama visits India Nov. 6, he will find a country of startlingly uneven development and perplexing disparities, where more people have cell phones than access to a toilet, according to the United Nations.

Read more: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2013301393_apasfeaindiatoiletsandcellphones.html

[Skittles]

1. disgusting

[Chulanowa]

2. Toilets require sewers

Sewers require public works.
Public works require construction and maintanance and somewhere to build.
Those three things require money.

A cell phone is a handheld object that is relatively inexpensive; especially in countries where legal acquisition of property has more than a few grey areas.

I'll bet there's more cell phones than washing machines i nthe United States, too.

[Skittles]

3. we pimp off jobs to Mumbai

surely they should have the money to improve conditions

[Chulanowa]

5. Maybe if you believe in "trickle down" economics

[diane in sf]

4. India is really arid--maybe they should be working on composting toilets--

they have lots of sewage related disease there from the 14th century of their plumbing.

[GreenPartyVoter]

6. It's funny but I had somehow gotten the idea that India was very wet. It would be

very cool if they could do composting toilets. That's a great idea.

[Art_from_Ark]

8. India is a huge country

It has about 1/3 of the area of the United States. It contains a huge desert call the Thar which is about as big as Kansas. Yet it also is home to Mawsynram and Cherrapunji, which are two of the wettest places (in terms of annual rainfall) in the world.

[BeFree]

7. We sure as hell are blessed, eh?

I lived with and without a toilet. I like having a toilet.
I was practically born with a toilet, and all those people don't have even one?

Man, am I blessed. Why? What makes me so blessed?