There is something similar to racism going on, and the article does mention it: the social caste system, in which it is considered taboo to adopt behaviors of the untouchables, even if such behaviors may be beneficial to avoid cholera.
It's all about prioritizing. Creating a bunch of port-a-potties is a cheaper, and more possible, short-term solution than upgrading the water infrastructure for a country of a billion people. Yes, I said billion, because yes, that is a factor. Ignoring it won't make it easier.
I'll agree, putting a port-a-potty inside my apartment isn't a great solution ... but now we're arguing placement, not the validity of using it instead of an open field.
As for cleaning out the port-a-potties ... if the Indian government who's installing these things isn't allocating some funding or encouragement to cleaning and maintaining, then that's another resource-allocation problem. Here again, we're discussing a bad (or at least, imperfect) implementation of the goal, not the validity of the goal itself.
It's also worth noting that in a sense it's not even upgrading water infrastructure - if a large region has next to no waterworks to begin with, that makes this even more difficult.
Lastly, just because it doesn't look like Western sanitation, doesn't mean it's not a better temporary solution. I would even suggest that for an area with very little water infrastructure to begin with, it may be too much to expect them to go straight to a system like you'd see in Berlin (or, I'm guessing, New Delhi).
It's all about prioritizing. Creating a bunch of port-a-potties is a cheaper, and more possible, short-term solution than upgrading the water infrastructure for a country of a billion people. Yes, I said billion, because yes, that is a factor. Ignoring it won't make it easier.
I'll agree, putting a port-a-potty inside my apartment isn't a great solution ... but now we're arguing placement, not the validity of using it instead of an open field.
As for cleaning out the port-a-potties ... if the Indian government who's installing these things isn't allocating some funding or encouragement to cleaning and maintaining, then that's another resource-allocation problem. Here again, we're discussing a bad (or at least, imperfect) implementation of the goal, not the validity of the goal itself.
It's also worth noting that in a sense it's not even upgrading water infrastructure - if a large region has next to no waterworks to begin with, that makes this even more difficult.
Lastly, just because it doesn't look like Western sanitation, doesn't mean it's not a better temporary solution. I would even suggest that for an area with very little water infrastructure to begin with, it may be too much to expect them to go straight to a system like you'd see in Berlin (or, I'm guessing, New Delhi).