NEW DELHI: As per the 2011 census, there are 4,451,753 people, who belong to the Jain community, comprising around 0.4% of India’s estimated 1.35 billion population. A majority of the community lives in Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh.
The fifth National Family Health Survey-2019-21 has pointed out that over 96% of households of the Jain community have access to toilets.
This is the overall highest national percentage in terms of having access to the toilet facility. Madhya Pradesh has a Jain population of over 5.67 lakh Maharashtra has over 14 lakh, Rajasthan over 6.22 lakh and Gujarat over 5.79 lakh.
Sharing details on religion-wise households having access to toilets, the NFHS-2019-21report points out that the people of Sikh community hold the second position with 97.5% of total households having access to toilets in the country.
After the people of Jain and the Sikh communities, the people of Christian community come in third position, with 91.2% of total households having access to toilets.
More than 90% of Muslim households, which is the bigger community among other minority populations in the country, have so far obtained access to toilets, which is larger than the Hindu households’ total access to toilets.
Surprisingly, the Hindu community comprises around 79.8% of India’s total population but only 80.7% of its total households have access to toilets, the survey points out.
In the same way, 87.8% of Buddhist and neo-Buddhist households have access to toilets.
Around 72.5% of households in the rest of other communities have access to toilets even after the country has promoted the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan.
The report has also detailed that only 68.5% of people belonging to Schedule Tribes have access to toilets whereas 76.9% of people belonging to Schedule Caste have access to the facility.