As pointed out in the editorial “Public toilets for our cities” (Dec. 31), the health of a city or for that matter any place or community is inescapably linked to adequate availability of toilets. This, in turn, is linked to the availability of toilets at homes. As a majority of houses lacks toilets, people take to the open fields and roadsides to defecate and urinate. Youngsters at homes take this practice to be natural and think nothing of easing themselves in public. Even many of those who have toilets at homes prefer to use the open space by force of habit grown over decades as also to save the trouble of cleaning their toilets. While insensitive and unresponsive governance at every level must bear the responsibility for this deplorable condition even after 60 years of planned development, a lot needs to be done to change the mindset of people who see no indignity and health hazard in this detestable social condition.
P. Krishnan,
Puttaparthy
