Rishi wrote:http://psenthilraja.wordpress.com/

In the West, society wants people to dress properly, regardless of whether or not they have taken a bath. But in our dharmic civilisation, personal hygiene, cleanliness, mental purity, and kula acharams are the parameters within which a person must function. Here, the need to maintain personal cleanliness is more important than personal comfort. Hence, traditionally, people preferred to perform their ablutions in places far away from home, even if it involved discomfort. The toilet system has long been alien to rural India; people hated defecating in confined spaces, having to bear the bad smell.
The sastras prescribed strict rules on how to defecate. Manu Smriti says one has to roll out his sacred threads and put them on the right ear, and look at the sky while defecating. Manu Smriti Vishnu Purana gives guidelines regarding the distance to be maintained from a water source, a river, a temple, while urinating or defecating. There are several rules regarding the direction to look, and how to clean oneself after defecation. While rules may differ in different sastras, the core idea is same – defecation has to be done in the open, and far away from home, temple, rivers and water source.
Scientifically, it has been established that toilets are breeding place of germs, more than any other part of the house. The toilet tap has the highest concentration of germs.
More pertinently, the western toilet system is water intensive and totally unsustainable in the Indian reality. Each flushing of the toilet takes at least 10 litres of water. An average person thus consumes around 50 litres of water for toilet alone. A family of four needs around 200 litres of water daily for toilets alone. For 25 crore families of India, one would 50 billion litres of water daily. Does India have it?
Already in villages, there is water scarcity. In my own village, people buy water for drinking and cooking in summer, when the bore wells go dry.
More pertinently, the water used in toilets is flushed into septic tanks, where it remains stagnant for years and become poisonous. When the tank is full, the water and solid waste are drained into the rivers and water sources. Toilet water forms the bulk of sewage discharged by major cities and towns. Is this sanitation? Our holy rivers, the Ganga and Yamuna, are virtually sewage dumps today, and if there is no fresh water from the Himalayas, all these wastes would stagnate there and devastate the metros.
Septic tanks are one of the largest breeding grounds of mosquitoes, leading to spread of germs. They also emit greenhouse gases and contribute to global warming. Imagine, crores of such systems emitting methane on a daily basis.
A major question which none of those who advocate the toilet system will answer is – who will clean all the toilets being built?