Indian officials are humiliating people who defecate outdoors

CRAMMED into Meena Choudhary’s mud-brick house in Yeoor, on the outskirts of Mumbai, are a television, fridge and washing machine. Yet until recently her family of six relieved themselves in nearby fields. The morning ritual involved arming herself with a jug, stick and torch, negotiating squelching bogs and tall grass, glancing around for onlookers and thumping the ground a few times to scare off snakes. “It was stressful,” says Mrs Choudhary, who managed to persuade her husband to build a toilet at home two years ago.