New Delhi (Sputnik): On World Toilet Day, India's top bureaucrats set an example by soiling their hands in toilet pits.
On Monday, people in Uttar Pradesh's Firozabad district gathered in large numbers near a toilet pit to witness what they called "a miracle." Many villagers from Wajidpur village even placed friendly bets on whether two of India's top bureaucrats would actually clean a toilet, according to the local media.
Param Iyer, secretary of the Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation, and Amitabh Kant, CEO of Niti Aayog, picked up shovels and started to dig out the human waste-turned-compost from a local twin pit toilet. Within the next few minutes, the entire toilet pit was emptied, and the compost was handed over to the villagers.
"The objective behind the entire exercise was simple — to tell people that cleaning toilets are completely healthy and safe. Since the act of emptying a pit latrine is considered to be socially degrading, people do not construct toilets at home and prefer to defecate in the open. To eliminate the shame and stigma associated with the usage of toilets and help people embrace the toilet culture," one of the organizers of the event told the media.