Miscellany

An estimated 1.2 billion people, primarily in Asia and Africa, still don’t use toilets to defecate, a forum of experts who gathered in Stockholm in August this year to assess the sanitation problems, were told.   For many extremely poor people who are given toilets by aid groups, it becomes the most precious item they own and therefore they use it as a religious shrine or a dry place to store firewood, international development consultant Kamal Kar said.

In recent years, experts have found that the best method has been to shame people into using some form of toilets even the most primitive sort, to confine excreta. (Khaleej Times reports AFP news dispatch)

The National Commission for Minorities (NCM) will submit a report  on the communal violence and subsequent incidents which claimed 10 lives in Andhra Pradesh’s Adilabad district. A day after their visit to Bhainsa town and Vatoli village in Adilabad district, NCM members, veteran journalist Dileep Padgaonkar and Zoya Hasan, a professor of political science,  met Chief Minister Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy .They said they would submit a report  about the cause and effect of the October 10, communal violence at Bhainsa. The report will be made public. The NCM members said that the police should have been more alert during the Durga Devi procession in Bhainsa. Four people were killed in the communal clashes that broke out during the procession. Dozens of people were injured and several shops, houses and vehicles were damaged in the violence.