34,000 Households In Bangalore Prefer Technology Over Sanitation

"More than 30,000 households do not have toilets, but have mobiles. I've found that many who come seeking government grants for construction of toilets have mobiles. Some have two mobiles, or a single mobile with two SIM cards, but aren't bothered about building a toilet in their houses," he said.

Jairam Ramesh, Union minister for rural development, is in total agreement with Bettaswamy and hence commented on this issue saying that people in India prefer owning a mobile phone over a toilet. He says that the country with over 700 million mobile phone users, accounts for 60 percent of open defecation in the world, which is very shameful.

Bettaswamy has mentioned that ZP's target is to construct 25,000 toilets this financial year under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme and Nirmal Bharat Abhiyan. Initially, an amount of Rs 3,500 was granted for constructing toilets, which has now been increased to 10,000.  

Despite there being toilets available in the outskirt regions, many people are taking advantage of them as godowns and storerooms for better rents.

Sikkim has successfully achieved the total sanitation level whereas Karnataka is aiming to become free from open defecation by the year 2018. Other Indian states like Himachal Pradesh and Kerala are also striving hard to get rid of the same problem, while Tamil Nadu hopes to do it by 2015.

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