World Toilet Day just got a whole lot more interesting.
On Saturday, Ram Shinde, a minister for water conservation in the western state of Maharashtra, was filmed relieving himself in the field near the side of the road — despite government efforts to stop people from peeing in public. Shinde said of the incident, “I have been travelling continuously for the last one month reviewing the Jalyukta Shivar scheme. Continuous travelling in high temperatures and dust made me ill. I was suffering from fever and when I couldn’t find a toilet while travelling, I had to relieve myself in the open.”
According to UNICEF, 70 percent of Indian households do not have toilets while around 600 million people, nearly half the population, defecate in the open. That explains a lot about the cryptic video. See for yourself.
