"Women who must go outside have to do so before sunrise or after nightfall so they can't be seen," said Bindeshwar Pathak, founder of Sulabh, which has built toilets for ten million Indians, and the recipient of this year's Stockholm Water Prize for developing ecofriendly and cheap lavatories to help to improve public health.

"We have more toilets, less shame among women and less disease," S.K.Monda, the official in charge of the programme, said.

I'm happy to see the issue getting attention. Having adequate resources to relieve oneself shouldn't be some kind of privilege, especially in developed areas.

Some upper-caste communities are not happy having lavatories in their homes because tradition dictates that such an arrangement is unclean.

That to me suggests a cultural belief among some that bodies are inherently unclean, perhaps created after decades of poor sanitation causing people to mistake bad waste disposal with the body itself being dangerous and unhealthy. Hopefully the improvements in sanitation and the increase in lavatories will help dispel that myth so more women can fulfill a basic need with dignity. It seems like the outdated beliefs of some communities could be causing health and social problems for these women.

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