If you have 1+ toilets per person, you're in the global elite. If you have private, safe, indoor plumbing, you have what 2+ billion people lack. If you've never queued for a toilet, you've never experienced the daily reality of the urban poor.
Keep that number in mind as we explore how something as basic as toilet access reveals the deepest inequalities in our economic systems.
From BMW to Bureaucracy: The Inequality Spectrum
March 8th, 2025 - Pune, India: A viral video shows two young men in a BMW, allegedly intoxicated, with one urinating in the middle of a busy road while women are present nearby. When confronted by locals, the perpetrator exposed himself further, escalating the situation. The incident sparked outrage about wealth-based privilege and women's safety.
This wasn't just bad behaviour—it was economics in action. Here were individuals with enough wealth to own a BMW treating a public road as their private bathroom, while millions in India lack access to basic sanitation facilities.
Compare this to Somlo, the protagonist in Ramnath Gajanan Gawade's powerful short story "Tale of a Toilet" from the anthology The Greatest Indian Stories Ever Told. Gawade, a prominent voice in Konkani literature, creates a character who desperately wants to build a toilet for his family's dignity but faces months of bureaucratic delays, corrupt officials, and endless application processes. He's willing to work, pay, and follow every rule—yet the system fails him repeatedly.
The Literature of Inequality
"Tale of a Toilet" isn't just a story about sanitation—it's an economic case study. Somlo's journey illustrates multiple economic concepts including market failure where the government fails to provide adequate public goods, information asymmetries where officials withhold information about available schemes, institutional barriers through complex bureaucratic processes that favour those with connections, and opportunity costs through time and dignity sacrificed navigating an inefficient system.
The story powerfully debunks the myth that poor people are "lazy" or "choose" to live without proper sanitation. Somlo is actively pursuing every bureaucratic channel—the system fails him, not vice versa.
This connects to broader literary explorations of inequality, like Aravind Adiga's The White Tiger, which explores similar themes of class privilege and systemic inequality. Both works show how economic inequality creates different sets of rules for different people.
Cinema and the Economics of Dignity
Film has proven to be a powerful medium for exploring toilet inequality:
"Q2P" (2006) by Paromita Vohra examines Mumbai's dreams of becoming a "future Shanghai" while following who has to "queue to pee." The documentary reveals how urban planning reflects deeper inequalities about gender, class, and access to public space.
"The Morning Ritual" (2008) by Ritesh Batra (who later directed The Lunchbox) follows 7-year-old Iqbal whose usual place for his "morning ritual" is blocked by luxury condos. His quest leads him through Mumbai's "toilet mafia" and into parts of the city he's never seen—illustrating how gentrification displaces basic human needs.
"Good Morning Mumbai" (animated short) addresses similar themes through animation, showing how slum dwellers resort to using railway lines as toilets due to infrastructure failures.
"Slumdog Millionaire" contains the iconic scene where young Jamal falls into a makeshift toilet to get an autograph—literally diving through excrement for a chance at economic opportunity. The scene serves as a powerful metaphor for how the poor must navigate through the "crap" of systemic inequality to reach success.
Even Bollywood has engaged with the issue: "Toilet: Ek Prem Katha" (2017) starring Akshay Kumar tells the story of a man whose wife leaves him because their house lacks a toilet. Prime Minister Modi called it "a good effort to further the message of cleanliness," and Bill Gates listed it among the six positive things that happened in 2017.
The Museum of Human Need
The Sulabh International Museum of Toilets in Delhi, established in 1992, chronicles the global history of sanitation. Time magazine listed it among the "10 museums around the world that are anything but mundane." The museum features toilets from 50 countries spanning from 3000 BC to the present, including reproductions of King Louis XIV's supposed toilet and gold and silver toilet pots used by Roman emperors.
But this isn't just quirky history—it's economic history. The museum demonstrates how toilet access has always been a marker of status, power, and economic privilege throughout civilizations.
Data Visualisation: Dollar Street's Global Bathroom Tour
Gapminder's Dollar Street project offers perhaps the most powerful visual analysis of global toilet inequality. By photographing families' bathrooms across different income levels worldwide, Dollar Street transforms abstract statistics into visceral reality.
Browse from the poorest households (earning less than $30/month) to the richest (over $10,000/month) and witness how toilet facilities change. At the lowest income levels, we see pit latrines, shared facilities, or no toilets at all. Low-middle income households typically have basic flush toilets, often shared between families. Middle income families enjoy private flush toilets with basic amenities, while higher income households feature multiple bathrooms, luxury fixtures, bidets, and smart toilets.
This visual journey makes inequality tangible in ways that GDP statistics cannot. Each photograph represents real families, real dignity, real economic constraints. The progression from a hole in the ground to a marble-clad bathroom with gold fixtures isn't just about wealth—it's about health, safety, privacy, and fundamental human dignity.
The economic insights from Dollar Street are striking. We can observe the income elasticity of toilet quality and how bathroom standards rise exponentially with income. Geographic patterns reveal how country-level wealth affects even the poorest households' access. Gender implications become visible through privacy features, safety considerations, and family dynamics. Cultural variations show how different societies prioritise toilet investment at similar income levels.
India's Swachh Bharat Abhiyan (Clean India Mission), launched in 2014, represents one of the largest government interventions in sanitation history, building over 100 million toilets in direct pursuit of SDG 6 targets. It's a massive real-world experiment in government intervention addressing market failure, infrastructure provision as development strategy, behaviour change economics through awareness campaigns, and cost-benefit analysis of public health investment. The programme explicitly aimed to make India open defecation-free by 2019, aligning with the global SDG timeline of 2030.
The programme's mixed results highlight the complexity of addressing inequality through policy. Building toilets doesn't automatically mean they'll be used—cultural change must accompany infrastructure investment.
The Gender Economics of Public Space
The toilet issue reveals stark gender inequalities. Men can use almost any public space as a toilet with relative impunity, while women require private, safe facilities which often don't exist or cost money. This creates significant economic costs as women lose productive hours, face health problems, and avoid employment without adequate facilities. Safety costs are equally serious, as women face harassment and violence when seeking private spaces for basic biological needs.
Cultural norms compound these economic barriers. In many societies, women's bodily functions are heavily taboo, creating additional constraints on mobility and economic participation that extend far beyond the immediate infrastructure problem.
Creative Resistance: Gods, Walls, and Behavioural Economics
Some communities have experimented with placing images of Hindu gods on walls to deter public urination, as documented by YouTuber Karl Rock. This represents an interesting example of using cultural reverence as an informal policy tool, though its effectiveness appears mixed and its adoption varies widely. The strategy illustrates how communities sometimes attempt to use cultural resources when formal governance fails, essentially applying nudge theory through environmental design. However, the approach has clear limitations, and reports suggest that determined individuals may ignore even religious imagery when desperate need meets inadequate infrastructure.
The Global Toilet Crisis: World Toilet Day and SDG 6
November 19th is World Toilet Day, established by the UN after lobbying by Jack Sim, founder of the World Toilet Organisation (featured in the documentary "Mr. Toilet: The World's #2 Man"). This international recognition demonstrates how toilet access has become a legitimate global development priority, forming a crucial component of UN Sustainable Development Goal 6: Clean Water and Sanitation.
SDG 6 specifically targets ensuring "availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all" by 2030. Target 6.2 aims to "achieve access to adequate and equitable sanitation and hygiene for all and end open defecation, paying special attention to the needs of women and girls and those in vulnerable situations." The economic rationale is compelling: every dollar invested in water and sanitation returns an estimated $4 in economic benefits through reduced healthcare costs, increased productivity, and improved educational outcomes.
The toilet crisis directly undermines multiple SDGs simultaneously. Without proper sanitation, we cannot achieve SDG 3 (Good Health and Well-being) as waterborne diseases flourish. SDG 4 (Quality Education) suffers when girls drop out of school due to inadequate toilet facilities. SDG 5 (Gender Equality) remains elusive when women face safety risks and time burdens seeking private spaces. SDG 8 (Decent Work and Economic Growth) is constrained when workers lose productivity to illness or when women cannot participate fully in the economy. The interconnected nature of the SDGs means that toilet access isn't just about sanitation—it's fundamental to sustainable development itself.
The Spirit Level: Why Inequality Matters for Everyone
The BMW incident perfectly illustrates this phenomenon. Extreme inequality creates antisocial behaviour even among the privileged, while those denied basic dignity such as proper sanitation experience chronic stress that affects community well-being. Wilkinson's work suggests that addressing basic infrastructure isn't just about helping the poor—it's about creating healthier societies for everyone.
Economic Concepts in Action
This exploration of toilets and inequality illuminates key IBDP Economics concepts. Market failures become evident through public goods undersupply in sanitation infrastructure, negative externalities affecting public health, and information asymmetries creating bureaucratic complexity. Government intervention takes multiple forms including direct provision through programmes like Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, regulation and legislation, and awareness campaigns using nudge techniques. Development economics emerges through infrastructure serving as the foundation for economic growth, gender inequality acting as a development barrier, and cultural factors playing crucial roles in economic change. The study of inequality and poverty reveals multiple dimensions of deprivation, institutional barriers that perpetuate poverty cycles, and the fundamental connection between dignity and economic well-being.
The False Choice: Individual vs. Structural Solutions
A common misconception attributes open defecation to individual laziness or cultural backwardness. This misses the economic reality of institutional barriers through complex bureaucratic processes, credit market failures where poor people can't access loans for toilet construction, information asymmetries where people don't know about available schemes, and government failures through poor implementation despite good policies.
The contrast is stark: wealthy individuals with multiple private toilets choosing to use public roads (BMW incident) versus poor individuals fighting bureaucracy for months to build a single toilet (Somlo's story).
Beyond the Flush: What This Teaches Us About Economics
The toilet serves as a "spirit level" for measuring society's true equality. It reveals how basic needs become luxury goods under inequality, the interconnection between individual dignity and social trust, the limits of purely technical solutions to social problems, the importance of universal access to public goods, and the complexity of changing both infrastructure and culture simultaneously.
Conclusion: The Economics of Human Dignity
From BMW drivers treating roads as bathrooms to bureaucrats denying toilet permits, from god tiles on walls to international development goals—the simple question "Who gets to use a toilet?" reveals the deepest truths about economic inequality.
Every time you walk 30 steps to your private bathroom, remember Somlo's months-long bureaucratic struggle. Every time you use a public toilet without fear, remember the women who risk assault for basic biological needs. Every time you flush without thinking about where it goes, remember the 2+ billion people who lack safely managed sanitation.
Economics isn't just about GDP and inflation rates. It's about human dignity, social trust, and whether basic needs are treated as human rights or market privileges. The toilet tells that story more clearly than any textbook—if we're willing to listen.
