Dumka: At a time when the government is strongly supporting for toilets in every household in rural areas, a class 12 girl student from Dumka district in Jharkhand has committed suicide, after failing to convince her parents to build a toilet at their residence.
“My daughter told me that I go have to travel so far for a toilet in this heat, so construct a toilet first,” said her mother.
Ashamed that she had to go the fields instead where she lacked privacy, she decided to take her life.
Khusboo’s parents who own a pucca four-room house with courtyard could have afforded to construct a toilet but a lavatory never figured in their priority list as they believed that saving money was more prior than getting a toilet in their home.
Her relatives claim that the girl used to feel ashamed to defecate in the open. This incident came as an eye opener for the people in villages.
Meanwhile, Superintendent of Police Vipul Shukla said that the matter is being investigated deeply.
The ‘loo’ problem
Over 92% of rural households in Jharkhand don’t have toilets and over 13 crore households in India don’t have a toilet inside their homes, according to latest Census data available from 2011. A majority of them — over 11.6 crore households — that are without access to toilets are in rural areas.
Even as women battle disease and death because of lack of proper toilet facilities, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had promised to put half a crore toilets in the first 100 days of his tenure.
Women have meanwhile been known to take matters in their own hands, with many brides refusing to marry if their husband’s house doesn’t have a toilet, or even leavingtheir husbands’ homes after marriage if proper toilets are not constructed.