New Delhi: High-profile toilets built by the Planning Commission at an estimated cost of Rs 35 lakh has caught the fancy of the ministers who appear keen to use it. The issue of the Rs 35 lakh toilets came before the start of the Cabinet meeting on Thursday as many ministers showed their keenness to have access to the swanky toilets. One senior cabinet minister asked for the smart card...
03:46 PM, Jun 07, 2012
New Delhi: Planning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia on Wednesday justified the expenditure amounting to Rs 35 lakh on renovating two toilets in Yojana Bhawan saying it was within the budget. Montek said there was nothing wrong in the upgradation of toilets. "This is under the Planning Commission renovation work and within the budget. This is a decision taken by the administration. There is nothing wrong, we have tried...
03:43 PM, Jun 06, 2012
New Delhi: The Planning Commission has issued a statement slamming the reports of wasteful expenses on renovating two toilets in Yojana Bhawan calling it a routine maintenance and upgradation. The Planning Commission also said that the toilets being renovated are for the public and not for senior officials. "The toilets being repaired or renovated are public toilet blocks and not private toilets for senior officials or members," the Planning commission...
02:00 PM, Jun 06, 2012
Rome: Governments are failing to fund projects to improve access to toilets and other sanitation services in poor countries because the subject remains "taboo", a director at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation said on Monday. "Who wants to talk about shit?" asked Frank Rijsberman, Director of Water, Sanitation and Hygiene at the $ 34 billion charitable foundation, during an interview with Reuters on Monday. "It's the last big taboo...
08:49 AM, May 01, 2012
Patna: Nearly 56 per cent of families in Bihar have a mobile or landline connection, but about 77 per cent of the population lack toilets, says a census report, highlighting the paradoxes in the state which has taken big leaps in development but also lagged behind in key areas. "Till 2001, only 2.2 per cent families were using any kind of telecom facility in Bihar, now over half of its...
02:42 PM, Apr 20, 2012
CHENNAI: If the Integral Coach Factory has its algorithm right, there will very soon be no smelly toilets on trains. This innovation should make train travel a more pleasant affair. But the absence of smell is only the by-product. The new bio toilets developed by Railways design engineers will do away with manual scavenging on trains and add to the life span of the tracks. The new toilet will have...
08:55 AM, Apr 12, 2012
London: A new invention, being funded by billionaire Bill Gates, aims to turn used toilet water into drinking water, a British nanotechnology expert says. According to Manchester University's Sarah Haigh, the invention could make waste water from toilets safe to drink, the Daily Mail reported. She believes a new range of materials could extract energy from human waste. The innovation could transform the lives of millions of people in the...
12:50 PM, Apr 07, 2012
New Delhi: Thirty seven percent of toilets in the capital's government schools are "very dirty" and in "subhuman" condition, a survey done by the NGO CRY has revealed. The study by Child Rights and You (CRY) on Thursday said 318 toilets were scrutinised in 44 schools across the city and the situation was the worst in schools in the northwest, northeast and outer districts of Delhi. Interestingly, the survey revealed...
12:00 PM, Mar 30, 2012
Nagpur: Protesting against lack of public toilets for women in Nagpur, a group of activists encircled a men's public toilet near Railway Station to press for their demand to construct public toilets for women. Led by city lawyer Smita Singalkar, the women activists also carried banners demanding women's toilets at prominent places in the city. Singalkar in a release said today that there were only 69 public toilets for women...
01:39 PM, Mar 08, 2012
Pune: The 'Occupy Men's Toilet' campaign started by women in China to protest against the lack of sanitation facilities for them is beginning to grip the imagination of women in the city. Activists, working women and college students are now saying that if the 78 newly elected women representatives in the civic house do nothing on the issue, they will launch a similar drive in the city. The PMC has...
09:48 AM, Mar 03, 2012
Mumbai: Central Railways' grand vision to have corporates, builders and private companies adopt railway stations and build toilet blocks seems to have gone down the drain due to lack of interest displayed by potential developers. More than four months ago, senior officials of the network and General Manager Subodh Jain had proposed construction of '5-star' toilets. They had also identified stations like Dadar, Thane, Kalyan, Vikhroli, Kurla and CST for...
02:33 PM, Mar 01, 2012
London: It may look to be coming straight from some science fiction but high-tech toilets that can analyse your excrement, 3D contact lenses and doors that open just as you look at them would become a reality in future. According to top futurologist Frank Shaw from Britain's Centre for Future Studies, these things could all materialise within 15 years, the Sun reported Thursday. Shaw has revealed a list of changes...
08:53 AM, Feb 24, 2012
Jairam Ramesh on Friday expressed concern that the government's Total Sanitation Campaign (TSC) is being seen as a 'token sanitation campaign' and rued that women were demanding mobile phones but not toilets. ...
04:07 PM, Feb 18, 2012
Rajeev Kher, along with his brother Ranjit and friend Ulka, runs a business aimed at providing portable toilets to India's poorest. ...
02:29 PM, Dec 05, 2011
London: The next time you take out money from an automated teller machine (ATM), make sure you either wear gloves or wash your hands. Cleanliness tests have revealed that cash machines are as dirty and carry the same germs as public toilets. Health experts took swabs from the numeric key pads on a string of ATMs around Britain that are used by thousands of shoppers every day. They then took...
10:36 AM, Jan 12, 2011
Singapore: Squeaky-clean Singapore needs cleaner toilets and public awareness is one way to achieve this, a civic group said at the launch of the latest stage of its LOO campaign -- Let's Observe Ourselves. The city-state has 30,000 public restrooms and is pushing to make 70 percent of them at least "three-star" clean by 2013. But a survey by the Restroom Association (Singapore) (RAS) found that only some 500 of...
02:11 PM, Dec 20, 2010
New Delhi: Low-cost lavatory technique, developed by an Indian NGO, will be adopted by the US Army to build public toilets in Afghanistan, a senior US military official said. The US troops will build at least 40 toilet complexes linked with biogas generation plants in Kandahar as a part of the reconstruction process in the country. The technical know-how of the model designed by Sulabh International would also be shared...
07:45 PM, Sep 06, 2010
London: A high-tech loo that provides an instant health check for its users every time they answer a call of nature has been created by Japanese scientists. The toilet analyses users' urine, temperature, blood pressure and weight every time they urinate. And, in a matter of seconds it produces a wellbeing report which is displayed on a wall-mounted screen,
The Sun reported. The data can also be transferred to the...
11:59 AM, Aug 27, 2010
According to a study by UN more people in India, the world's second most crowded country, have access to a mobile telephone than to a toilet, Do you think the progress in India getting more and more lopsided? Tell us.
03:28 PM, Apr 15, 2010
According to a new UN study on how to cut the number of people with inadequate sanitation. ...
10:27 AM, Apr 15, 2010
