No privy, no passport in India

Public servants in an Indian town are denying passports to applicants who do not have a toilet at home. Police in Katni district, in central Madhya Pradesh state, are refusing to issue clearance letters — necessary to get travel documents — to those who can’t prove they have a functioning bathroom. “Police will ask passport applicants to attach a copy certifying they have toilets at home,” a law enforcement official told the Times of India. The directive is part of a government sanitation campaign aimed at halting the practice in India of defecating in open spaces. Hundreds of public toilets are being built in the country, and billboards shame those who relieve themselves in fields and on train tracks.