| I will bet that most of the comments in this thread are from people who have never lived in rural India. I have, and will tell you the real reason. It has little to do with literacy or education. It is because (warning, this is going ironic) Indian people are incredibly disgusted about shit and want to not think about dealing with it. I'm Indian myself. For example, we think toilet paper is a horrible idea. You just clean your shit with...paper...and just leave it like that? That would not fly, even in any of the villages you mention. They have to have water to clean their shit, usually supplied in a small bucket or vessel. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lota_(vessel) Now think about temperatures. The current temperature at many places in India is more than a 100 degrees Fahrenheit. Your average restroom or shovel pit or whatever is going to smell incredibly bad and be full of flies and a horrible smell. That is why some people prefer the river, and don't use the toilets that are built for them (links elsewhere in this thread). Solutions? It's a usability problem. Bidets for poop washing that can be filled up instead of using piped water, super hydrophobic coatings, really large pits (so you don't smell the waste) –- things like that are going to be the solution. Unfortunately, no one approaches it in that way, and prefers to go the route of "Let's teach these uneducated savages not to shit where they eat." This is very unfortunate and I hope it will change in the future. |
In places like Haridwar one gets screamed at for as little as putting the footwear in the stream.
Then again there are sewer dumping into Ganga all over the place (though this was/is being challenged) - starting in fact from a few hundred meters down from Hari ki Paudi.
I don't know.
Since Indian literature (and with it the languages) have essentially become comatose, perhaps the country has lost all ability to make logical deductions [1], that'd be necessary for any level of consistency.
[1] No, I know Sanskrit deals very much with logic and reasoning and grammar. I don't see so much as a vestige today, however. May be since it was/is practiced by a tiny minority that may not be all the surprising.