Mobile Phones are More Common than Toilets in India

This revelation comes from a recent UNU-INWEH (United Nations University-Institute for Water, Environment and Health) report.

“It is a tragic irony to think that in India, a country now wealthy enough that roughly half of the people own phones, about half cannot afford the basic necessity and dignity of a toilet,” said Zafar Adeel, Director of UNU-INWEH, and chair of UN-Water, a coordinating body for water-related work at 27 UN agencies and their partners.

India has 545 million mobile phones (enough to serve about 45 per cent of the population), but only about 366 million people (31 per cent of the population) had access to improved sanitation in 2008.

Recommendations in the report Sanitation as a Key to Global Health: Voices from the Field are intended to accelerate the pace towards reaching the Millennium Development Goal on halving the proportion of people without access to safe water and basic sanitation.

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