It's easy to "lie" with statistics. But numbers can also tell the truth. A few days ago, driving in to Vancouver, I took a rest from listening to the lurid plight of Ian MacEwan's singularly unappealing protagonist, Michael Beard, (Solar, 2010) to listen to CBC.
It was International Toilet Day. Clara Greed, a professor of Inclusive Urban Planning in Bristol, who has just received the OBE for her work for potty parity for women in Britain, was interviewed first. Due to a dearth of facilities, UK Women, especially elderly ones, said Greed, must carefully plan their journeys to ensure access to toilets.
In the US, John Banzhaf, a professor of Public Interest Law at George Washington University, is working for porcelain parity for women by working to change laws and building codes. Mary Clancy, a former Canadian parliamentarian, reported that she had to lobby for female facilities in the House of Commons during her early tenure there.
There was a mildly comic aspect to these stories, and I laughed as I listened. Then the topic turned to the third world's devastating lack of access to basic sanitation. Hearing about the shortage of toilets for schoolchildren in Kenya changed the mood completely.
Lizette Burgers, UNICEF's chief of water and sanitation spoke from from her office in Bangalore, reporting that though the Indian government of has recently increased the budget for new toilets tenfold, the shortage of facilities remains a severe social and health problem, especially for women and girls. The final statistic was the shocker. No fewer than six hundred million people in India live without toilets. Check the story if you find that unbelievable, as I did.
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