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Minister claims India’s women want mobile phones “not toilets”

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Ellie Watmuff
WVoN co-editor

One of India’s most outspoken cabinet members, Jairam Ramesh, the Minister for Rural Development, caused controversy on Friday by declaring that women in the country are increasingly demanding mobile phones, but “not demanding toilets”.

His sensationalist comments formed part of a speech about sanitation, which he delivered in New Delhi at the launch of the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) report on Millennium Development Goals.

“Sanitation is the much more difficult issue,” Ramesh, who is also minister for Drinking water and Sanitation, said.

“Now we are talking of behavioural changes and women demand mobile phones. They are not demanding toilets. That is the mindset we have,”.

Ramesh´s inflammatory remarks drew strong criticism from women across India.

Many took exception to his gaffe which implied that women are somehow to blame for a lack of adequate toilet facilities in the country, by actively choosing mobile phones over improved sanitation.

AP president of Progressive Organisation for Women V Sandhya said “Jairam Ramesh should be ashamed of himself for being a minister in a government which has failed to provide latrines to women but made cellphones available everywhere.”

“Why is he blaming women for poor sanitation conditions in the country?” Ranjana Kumari, head of the Centre for Social Research in New Delhi asked.

“Is it not the responsibility of the government to ensure good sanitation facilities?”

In his delivery Ramesh expressed concern that India, one of the world’s most populous countries, accounts for almost 60% of open defection in the world while having in excess of 700 million mobile phone subscribers.

When later pressed on his remarks Ramesh acknowledged the headline grabbing potential of his outburst but said:

“The point is that India accounts for 60 per cent of open defecation in the world and this is a serious problem. Sixty per cent open defecation in a country that has 700 million mobiles!”

Sadly, his comments over-shadowed the broader concerns he raised regarding the impact the government’s low spend on sanitation was having on rural women in the country.

He described his own ministry’s Total Sanitation Campaign (TSC), as a ”token sanitation campaign” for the “pittance” it received in government funds and for the lack of substantive progress made.

He pledged improvement to ”both funding and management in water supply and sanitation “ in the next couple of months.

Ramesh’s comments come in the wake of an Indian woman being given $10,000 by a non-profit group for leaving her marital home because it lacked a toilet.

The woman, Anita Narre, refused to defecate in the open and sparked a “toilet revolution” in her village in central India. Her action motivated other women in the village to coax their partners to build toilets, transforming the village.

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