Jairam has another of those moments

Feb 18, 2012 - MANISH ANAND |

Age Correspondent

New Delhi

Despite reports of a few women having reportedly walked out of wedlock for lack of sanitation facilities, Union rural development mi-nister Jairam Ramesh on Friday claimed that “women demand mobile phones, they are not demanding toilets” to drive home the point that “there were certain cultural norms associated with open defecation”.

Claiming that sanitation is a much more difficult issue, Mr Ramesh lamented that though women demand mobile phones in a sign of behavioural change, they do not demand toilets. “That is the mindset we have,” said Mr Ramesh, adding that “there are social barriers to the issue of sanitation”.

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