Lucknow, with a population of nearly three million and the capital of India’s most populous state of Uttar Pradesh, doesn’t have any public toilets for women and has a toilet for every 58,844 people, a Right to Information (RTI) application has revealed. No wonder then, says RTI activist Urvashi Sharma, the city has become an open toilet, with hundreds spotted on any given day relieving themselves out in the open, on busy thoroughfares and even in VIP colonies. In her questions sent to the Lucknow Municipal Corporation (LMC), the activist had sought the number of public toilets within its limits. Admitting to an “acute shortage” of public toilets, LMC officials have also conceded that Lucknow has “no separate toilets for women.” This, amid growing concerns in the civil society about creating more toilets in the state, in absence of which many crimes against women like rape are taking place in the countryside. “I found this shocking as every day we hear that absence of public toilets is leading to spiralling crime,” Sharma told IANS while ruing the fact that if this was the situation in the state capital what it would be in small towns and villages.

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