In parts of India, courtship begins with a toilet

In the northern India state of Haryana, men outnumber women -- which gives brides-to-be a lot of leverage in the husband-finding game. The guys are finding it tough to bag a wife as it is, but now there's a phrase being bandied about by future mothers-in-law that makes things even harder: "No toilet, no bride [1]."

665 million people in India still have to dump out in open due to a chronic lack of crappers of any type. This works out to be around 200,000 tons of turds contaminating the land and waterways each day! And this leads to outbreaks of diarrhea, cholera, and many other sanitation-related diseases.

At the recent Third South Asian Conference on Sanitation [2] in Delhi, India announced that it hoped to meet its target of 100% sanitation for the population by 2012 [3]. Meaning that 40,000 toilets a day would have to be built --nearly eighty per minute in an eight-hour working day for the next three years.

So courting a girl is no longer just about the already-difficult tasks of satisfying a girl's financial and sexual needs -- now the potential groom has to satisfy her sanitation desires as well. No old, battered portadunny or long drop will do. And forget diamonds: an expensive, state-of-the-art commode is the way to a beautiful girl's heart these days.