Villagers should sell their wives if they cannot afford to install lavatories at home, according to a magistrate in India’s poorest state.

Kanwal Tanuj made his ill-judged appeal at the weekend as he struggled to convince a crowd of villagers in Bihar to invest in sanitation as part of the Clean India Movement.

He was filmed saying: “Save the dignity of your women if you can. How poor are you? Raise your hands and tell me if the value of your wife is lower than 12,000 rupees [£143].” He was citing the cost of installing a toilet, equivalent to about a third of the average yearly income in the state.

The magistrate’s plea did not provoke the reaction he had hoped. Whether they misunderstood him or took the view that their wives were indeed worth less than £143, some of the villagers raised their hands.

“Listen to me first, don’t raise your hands,” Mr Tanuj countered. “Which man would say take the dignity of my wife and give me 12,000 rupees? Is there anyone like that?”


Some in the audience were still not convinced.

When one man insisted that he could not afford a toilet, a frustrated Mr Tanuj replied: “If that is the case then go and sell your wife. If this is the mentality you have then go and sell your wife.”

Footage of the incident has been circulated widely on social media and has prompted both outrage and amusement. The confrontation underlines the colossal task of installing basic sanitation and building a social development programme, however well-intentioned, in a nation of 1.2 billion people, many of whom live in abject poverty.

The prime minister, Narendra Modi, has pledged to install a lavatory in each of India’s 650,000 villages. More than half of Indians do not have access to a toilet. His government built six million lavatories in his first year in office but faces an uphill struggle to convince the doubters.

Many Indians consider public defecation more hygienic than using a public facility that is not plumbed into a sewage system and therefore needs be emptied and cleaned regularly. In many rural areas the new lavatory stands idle while villagers continue to defecate in the fields.

A new Bollywood movie, Toilet: A Love Story, will draw attention to the blight of open defecation when it hits cinemas this week. Mr Modi has endorsed the film on Twitter, on which he has 32 million followers.

“Last year the government made around 300,000 toilets,” the film’s star, Akshay Kumar, said. “The problem is not about infrastructure but that people themselves don’t want to use them. They feel the freedom lies in them defecating in the open.”

Bihar’s government has vowed to stop public defecation by 2019 but the initiative has been flatly ignored by the poorest citizens, particularly in rural areas.

Mr Tanuj stressed the importance of a domestic toilet to the safety and dignity of women in the community. About half of all rapes in India take place when women are attacked while defecating in the open.

Even in cities, mismanagement, corruption and bureaucracy have hindered construction of new facilities. Earlier this year there was outrage in well-heeled south Delhi when the local authorities ordered all restaurants and hotels to make their lavatories available to members of the public for a nominal fee.