Tag Archives: slum-dwellers

I’m currently working on a story about toilets, or the lack thereof, in much of the world. Our journey starts here in India, which has the largest toiletless population on the planet. It was another eye-opening day here. We spent the day inside one of Delhi’s 1,500 or so “clusters,” or slums. While the toiletless population expands far beyond slum dwellers, it’s in here where the problem is at its worst. In this particular slum, there’s one toilet block for 5000 people — many of whom cannot afford the 1 rupee-per-use cost. One of the slum’s organizers introduced us to many of the residents here, who spoke to us about the many problems afflicting the population here — lack of toilets — lack of any sort of sanitation. People here are living within feet of open sewers — literally a shit-filled toilet within feet of where they eat and sleep each night. As we continued on, the picture just got worse and worse. More to come in our doc. (See more photos from my tour of the toilet museum here and from the Holi celebration here.) Follow me on Twitter, or the full Vanguard team, to get updates from the field as we shoot. added by: Adam_Yamaguchi