Google’s tribute to Mahatama Gandhi: Google Maps now shows over 57,000 public toilets across India

More than 2.5 lakh users now search for public toilets every month on both Google Search and Google Maps

As India marks the 150th anniversary of the birth of Mahatma Gandhi, Google announced on Wednesday that Google Maps now shows more than 57,000 public toilets in over 2,300 cities all over India. The development brings a new milestone to the Swachh Bharat flagship initiative under Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government. Notably, the Swachh Bharat Abhiyaan campaign was launched on October 02, 2014 from Rajghat by Modi.

More than 2.5 lakh users now search for public toilets every month on both Google Search and Google Maps, the Sundar Pichai-led company said in a statement.

The Swachh Bharat Mission, which was launched as a pilot in 2016 in New Delhi, Indore and Bhopal, by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs, has turned out to be a hit. Later in 2018, Google and MoUA joined hands to make the discovery of public toilets in India more convenient via the Google Maps app. It also found mention in Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s budget speech that she delivered earlier this year. In July this year, Google had added more than 45,000 public toilets under the government’s Loo Review campaign.

Users in India can enter ‘public toilets near me’ on Google Search, Google Assistant or Google Maps and get find toilets near them at the tips of their fingers.

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In addition, Google Maps’ Local Guides community keeps sharing feedback on toilets located near them. In 2018, Google Maps had rolled out a campaign to bring awareness and adoption that led to 32,000 reviews, photos, and edits for public toilets across the country by Local guides.

This also helped the Ministry take ownership of these listings on Google Maps with the help of the Google My Business platform so that they could easily monitor visits, reviews and ratings, among others in order to gain insights which could help them maintain and upgrade toilet units.

Google with its products and platforms like Search, Maps, Gmail, Android, Google Play, Chrome, and YouTube is a part of every user’s daily life in some way or the other and it is safe to say that its wide reach and infrastructure has definitely made things easier.