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India's shortage of toilets costs the country more than $50
billion a year, mostly through premature deaths and
hygiene-related diseases, according a World Bank study. India
suffers a greater cost than other Asian countries from the poor
collection of human excreta, the study found.
About 626 million Indians defecate in the open compared with 14
million in China, the World Health Organization said in a 2012
report.Since taking office in May, Modi has repeatedly lamented
the poor state of sanitation and public cleanliness in India,
vowing to solve the problems within the next five years. The
government has doubled spending on a toilet building program and
requested financial donations from some of the country's largest
companies to help.
"Earlier, the monitoring was done only about the construction of
toilets, but now the actual use of toilets will be ascertained,"
the government said in a statement on Wednesday.In October, Modi
annoyed government officials by ordering them to come to work to
clean toilets on a national holiday.
(Reporting by Andrew MacAskill; Editing by Douglas Busvine and
Alison Williams)
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