Ganges with Sue Perkins

I hope so NfK, I think the problem was that the girls did not want to go to boarding school and be separated from their father and siblings. That little girl looked as if she needed a lot of help.

The number of children portrayed living on the streets, earning their own living like the boys diving for rupees contrasts so sharply with the extreme wealth of some in India.

And their space programme! How can they invest in this when so many have no proper sanitation or homes?

Our guide explained that the central government does put aside for sanitation and waste disposal etc and has banned the caste system, but the problem is the money doesn't reach its destination. More often than not it gets diverted to provide an official with a swimming pool or such. The caste system is like a very extreme version of our class system a hundred or so years ago. We are going to return to India. Its a wonderful country in so many ways, but we'll be avoiding big cities. I can't cope with them.

A small gesture I know but we have twinned our loo. www.toilettwinning.org

I haven't seen the programme, but I'm not a fan of Sue Perkins.
I know a little bit about India as younger son and family live there. They live on a mountain though, not in a big town. I've had two long visits there.
Even so there are hygiene problems, especially drinking water, as contents of toilet etc go straight into a river. From which the drinking water comes. DiL had typhoid fever once. (Or cholera? not sure.)You have to purify every drop of water.
In the villages the poverty is such that they allow girl babies to die, and also help the elderly on their way out.
They have a small house surrounded by conifers and there are herds of wild cattle which are allowed to plod and poo all over the place. Called gaur.
The most striking thing is the gulf between the rich and the poor, as others have said.

NfkD that sounds like a good scheme. Was it in this programme that women were frightened to go out in the bush to go to the toilet and were thrilled that one toilet was going to be provided for the village?

There are more mobile phones in India than toilets, whether in house or shared.

The politics there stinks and Modi is worse

It is shocking to think that that lack of sanitation in thriving country like India, with a burgeoning economy, is worse than it used to be in this country when the worst of slum housing had five families sharing an outside toilet. They were the first on the agenda to be cleared. I don’t know where abouts on India’s agenda are it’s poor, but it doesn’t seem that they will be feeling the benefits of its newly acquired wealth and world status any time soon.

This link explains (partly) the hygiene and population problems:
www.d.umn.edu/~lars1521/India&birthcontrol.htm

I think it’s part of Wateraid Jalima. In villages women often wait until evening to go to the loo in the bush and don’t go alone.

Thanks NfkD.