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Building state-funded toilets is easier than getting people to use them, a sample survey tracking the government’s Swachch Bharat programme has revealed. A key aim of the Swachch Bharat mission is to end the practice of open defecation in the country. At least 43% of people in rural areas in Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh, accounting for two-fifths of India’s rural population, still defecated in the open in 2018 because of “cultural and other reasons”. However, the share of rural population openly defecating has greatly reduced from 70% in 2014. That’s among key findings of a team of demographers led by Ms Dianne Coffey, a visiting researcher at the Indian Statistical Institute. The team has been monitoring the sanitation scheme’s progress since 2014.