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| Prime Minister Narendra Modi says his government has made significant progress in improving access to toilets in India |
With her
bladder fit to burst on a recent ride with an all-female motorbike club, Vidhi
Malla chugged on her 350cc "Thunderbird" into a fancy highway eatery
near New Delhi and rushed to the toilet.
But to her
disgust, if not to her surprise, the facilities stank and the seat was
splattered with urine, forcing the 34-year-old to get back on her bike and wait
till she got home.
Indian
Prime Minister Narendra Modi will trumpet progress in improving access to
toilets at a Delhi convention starting this weekend -- but as Malla's
experience shows, there is still a long way to go.
Some help
is at hand from local startups providing ways to avoid coming into contact with
or clean up filthy toilet seats, which doctors warn pose a health risk to many
women.
"Toilets
are a huge issue. Once I caught an infection from using a loo in a big
hotel," Malla, a public relations consultant, told AFP.
Malla's
friends in her bike gang recounted their own horror stories -- from bins
overflowing with used toilet paper to wiping the seat with the edge of their
dresses.
Using a
dirty toilet, not drinking enough water or holding urine for a long time puts
women at a greater risk of urinary tract infections, a painful complaint that
half of women report having had at least once.
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India's
first female urination device costs 200 rupees ($3) for a pack of ten
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Indian
toilets "are a breeding ground for infections", gynaecologist Anshu
Jindal told AFP.
New
businesses tackling the problem are tapping into a feminine hygiene sector
forecast by Euromonitor to grow to $522 million by 2020 from $340 million now
as India's middle class swells.
India's
first female urination device, the PeeBuddy, is a simple candy-green cardboard
funnel laminated with water-resistant coating allowing women to keep their
distance from loo seats.
PeeSafe
meanwhile, dispensed from a purple spray can, is a seat sanitiser.
"We
have sold 750,000 units in the last 18 months and we are now present in 10
other countries," said Vikas Bagaria, founder of PeeSafe.
Innovations
like these have helped to "liberate" women like Malla, she says,
meaning they don't have to think twice before hitting the road.
Stand-and-pee
Such issues
are set to figure highly at the Mahatma Gandhi International Sanitation
Convention, running from Saturday to Tuesday.
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A lack of
sanitation remains a big problem in India, and doctors warn unclean
toilets are
a health risk for women
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The event,
coinciding with Gandhi's 150th birthday, is hosted by Modi with UN chief
Antonio Guterres in attendance alongside ministers and experts.
A lack of
sanitation remains a burning issue for India -- and much of the developing
world -- despite an aggressive drive by Modi's government since he came to
power in 2014.
His
government says it has slashed the number of people forced to defecate in the
open from 550 million in 2014 to less than 150 million today.
But the
state of existing toilets still shocks. The capital Delhi, for example, a
megacity teeming with 19 million people, has just a few hundred public
washrooms.
A survey of
200-odd toilets by Action Aid last year found 70 percent of them unclean and
without a water supply.
Entrepreneurs
abroad have also created products to help women but they are often
prohibitively expensive in a country where hundreds of millions of people live
on less than a dollar a day.
For
instance the reusable, silicone GoGirl stand-and-pee device costs $9.99 apiece
in the United States, while the Shewee goes for $12.
But a pack
of 10 single-use, locally produced PeeBuddy funnels costs 200 rupees ($3) and a
pack of two PeeSafe 75 ml sprays 350 rupees.
Deep Bajaj,
the brains behind PeeBuddy, came up with the idea during a road trip when he
noticed women in his group were not drinking anything.
"Men
are so blessed, we can stand and pee almost anywhere," Bajaj told AFP,
checking a consignment for dispatch at his chock-a-block warehouse.
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