Changing Long-Standing Behavior

Perhaps that should say "squatting" instead of standing. Visitors to India, particularly those who have ridden intercity trains, speak of seeing people squatting in fields along the track, defecating. Global Post reports this is common.

Nearly 70 percent of all households in rural India lacked a toilet in 2011, the World Bank reported recently. Two years ago, the World Health Organization and United Nations jointly estimated that 620 million people, or around half the population of 1.2 billion — regularly defecated in the open.

Building more toilets won’t necessarily solve the problem. A study published recently in the Mumbai-based Economic and Political Weekly, found that nearly 40 percent of those who go outdoors when nature calls said they preferred to defecate in the open.

The other DrC, our family photographer, took a photo of a Toilet Complex somewhere in the Goa region of India. If I can get her to forward the photo to me I'll include it below. Later...sorry, it turns out the photo is in a format Blogspot won't accept.