Build loo to woo women, men in Haryana told!

Forwarded to the Portal by: Amitangshu Acharya
Image and Content Courtesy: Ahmedabad Mirror

Women in Haryana have decided that they won't take shit from anyone! In a bid to ratchet up awareness on adequate sanitation, several women in the state have decided to marry off their daughters to only those men whose residences have proper toilets.

Suresh Devi, a resident of Shahar Malpur village, who has faced the embarrassment of defecating in open, made sure her would-be son-in-law had a 'functional' bathroom in his house before finalising her daughter's marriage.

"Everybody at my home used to go to the fields for defecation. We never had a toilet at home until the panchayat built one last year,"Devi, 52, said. "When I was marrying off my youngest daughter, Sonia, I made sure that there was a toilet in the boy's residence."

A relative of Devi, Suresh, said that hygiene was now an important issue for the poor.

More than 66 crore people in India defecate in the open. Several people, mostly the poor, die every year because of typhoid, jaundice and malaria.

The Haryana government has launched a sanitation campaign to prevent outbreak of diseases because of inadequate sanitation. "Our daughter will be married only to a family that has a toilet at home,"a 70-year-old resident of Khanpur Koliyan in Kurukshetra district, Satwant Kaur, said.

The Haryana government has been creating awareness about sanitation through jingles, posters and banners.

Walls in many villages have been painted with slogans in Hindi reading — "Na byahun beti us ghar mein jismein na ho shauchalaya (Won't get my daughter married into a household which does not have a toilet)."

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