Bride's new toilet points to social revolution

Uttar Pradesh: Spotlessly clean and decorated with plastic flowers and balloons for its opening ceremony, Priyanka Bharti’s toilet is seen as a gleaming symbol of the empowerment of Indian women.
It has been built in the village of Vishnupur Khurd in Uttar Pradesh state due to the determination of Priyanka, a young bride who walked out of her new marital home when she was appalled to find she had to defecate in the open.
The ensuing drama soon became well-known in the area as the newlyweds’ scandalised families both tried to persuade her to return to her husband but she refused, saying the shame of squatting in the fields was too much to bear.
“I was adamant that I could not stay in a home where people might see me go to the toilet outside in an unhygienic way,” Priyanka said after the lavatory, constructed by sanitation charity Sulabh, was ceremonially unveiled last week.

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“I don't know where I got the strength,” she said. “But I come from a family with many strong women and when I moved to my husband’s house I was without my relatives and friends and I was having to adjust to a new life.”
Her firm stance paid unexpected dividends after Sulabh, one of India’s largest social organisations, heard about her protest and adopted her cause as a way to promote better public health through proper toilet facilities.