Far more people in India have access to a mobile phone than to a toilet, according to a UN study on sanitation.
India’s mobile subscribers totalled 563.73 million at the last count, enough to serve nearly half of the country’s 1.2 billion population.
But just 366 million people – around a third of the population – had access to proper sanitation in 2008, said the study published by the United Nations University, a UN think-tank.
“It is a tragic irony to think in India, a country now wealthy enough that roughly half of the people own phones,” so many people “cannot afford the basic necessity and dignity of a toilet,” said Zafar Adeel, the UN University director.
Mr Adeel heads the UN University’s Institute for Water, Environment and Health, based in the Canadian city of Hamilton, which prepared the report.
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