I am in a slum in Faridabad, India, south of New Delhi, surveying rundown toilets with a man named Mayank Midha. Behind us is a standing pond of sewage. Over to our left are the narrow alleyways and tight living quarters of the slum, the outer walls of the skinny mud-brick buildings painted in cracked purples, yellows, aquamarines and blues. Stray dogs laze around, and children laugh and run down the corridors. The smell leaches from open sewer lines carved into the walkways made of dusty stone pavers. In one doorway, there’s a woman hunched over washing dishes on the floor.
The toilet stalls, roughly the size of portable toilets, are made of concrete, porcelain and rusted metal. I walk down the row to try prying open each one to look inside. After just a year of use, most of these latrines are either brimming with feces, stripped for parts, locked shut or some combination of the three. People in the neighborhood, noticing our curiosity in their broken toilets,…
Source CNET Tech
Source link
