Rural development ministry ropes in Bollywood actor Vidya Balan to promote the use of toilets. Total sanitation, the official term for ending open defecation in the country, is not remotely close to either total or sanitation, show census data.
The figures supplied by state governments on the website of the Total Sanitation Campaign (TSC) run by the Union Ministry for Rural Development have been exposed as false to a rather overwhelming degree. While the TSC data have 68 per cent sanitation for the country as a whole, the census found just 32.7 per cent of the country was so covered. Open defecation was the practice elsewhere.