No privy, no passport

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 cannot 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.

A commenter on the newspaper’s website added: “These people without toilets go abroad and give a bad name to Indians at airports.”

The directive is part of a government sanitation campaign aimed at halting the widespread practice in India of defecating in open spaces.