Welcome to Unbox’s “Viral Fridays” where we feature weirder than usual tech and geek related news to cap out the week.
The country of India has a serious problem with sanitation. Around 70% of Indian households don’t have access to toilets. So, where do they do their “dirty business” there? According to Public Radio International (PRI), a global non-profit journalism outfit, “roughly 60 percent of the country’s 1.2 billion people still defecate in the open.” Sad state of affairs.
The Indian Ministry of Urban Development (MoUD) aims to alleviate the problem by partnering with Google in launching a toilet-locating tool on Google Maps. The International Business Times India notes that the tool will initially debut in the Delhi area and will work like regular keyword searching, with both English and Hindi languages supported.
Toilets located in shopping malls, gas stations, hospitals and other public locations will be included in the results. The tool will be relying on crowdsourcing from users on the condition and availability of toilets.
The MoUD plans to pilot the toilet-locator project in Delhi before the end of November, with an expansion of service at an unspecified time.
