Need A Clean Toilet Right Now? Google Maps India Has Your Back

Google has always been ahead of its game by providing us an e-mail server, online maps, search engine among many others and with its newest addition, it is exploring territory that is relatively undiscovered. Indians can rejoice because the search engine giant will now include a special feature to find the nearest clean toilet, reports the Huffington post. Google maps already includes nifty features to point you out to the nearest ATMs, restaurants and petrol pumps but this is a move that is necessary and long overdue.  The move comes as a part of the Indian government’s Swacch Bharat Movement  reports the International Business Times.
The report further adds that Google is working with the Ministry of Urban Development to launch the Google Toilet locator that will be  integrated into Google Maps. In the app, listed toilets will include public toilets, Shulabh Sauchalyas, toilets in malls, metros, railway stations and other such places. The National Capital Region will the first area where the function will be available. A user wanting to utilize this feature simply needs to search for phrases such as ‘toilet’, ‘lavatory’, ‘sulabh’, ‘sauchalaya’ in Google Maps and the nearest locations of these facilities will be displayed on the screen and most of the data will be  crowd-sourced as well. The best part is that users will also be able to give feedback on the actual cleanliness levels of the toilets, which is more than necessary. A source told IBT, “

Mechanisms are in place for the facility to be scaled up, and for it to reach all the 2,041 urban local bodies (ULBs) of the country.” India sadly beats other South-Asian countries in terms of percentage of open defecation and the current government has been taking several steps to curb this practice especially since it affects the health of a large part of our population. With the increase in the permeation of technology into more rural areas, perhaps the inclusion in the app will be a move for the better, but only time will tell if it actually makes a difference in the long run.

To read the complete report by the Huffington Post, click here.

Smashingmagazine.com