India, where almost half of the population own mobile phones, is lagging behind the rest of the world in achieving the United Nations Millennium Development Goal on sanitation, the U.N. University said, according to Hindustan Times. The Canada-based think tank found in a recent study that India has 545 million working mobile phones, but only 366 million out of the country’s 1 billion people have access to toilets and other sanitation facilities.
“It is a tragic irony to think that in India, a country now wealthy enough that roughly half of the people own phones, half cannot afford the basic necessity and dignity of a toilet,” noted Zafar Adeel, a director of the U.N. University.
The U.N. University conducted the study on mobile phone users in different developing country to demonstrate how some countries lag behind the U.N. goals on sanitation.