How religious cooperation is leading to more toilets in India

March 22, 2016
By Allison Pond
Deseret News

For decades, one of India’s largest religious festivals left a stinking mess at the mouth of the Ganges River.

Millions of pilgrims gather each January for a dip in the sacred waters of the Ganges Delta where it empties into the Bay of Bengal. The river has been a symbol of purification since ancient times, yet the festival, the Ganga Sagar Mela, left its beaches polluted with human waste from pilgrims lacking sanitary knowledge, a common problem in the developing world, and access to toilets.