Minneapolis is not San Francisco, not yet, although many dream of making it so. The two cities are similar in size and population.

Oh, I can understand not wanting to read it. But I had to follow where the story took me.

About six or seven years ago I was in San Francisco in some tourist area (I think near Ghiradelli Square) and a guy about ten or fifteen feet from me pulled down his pants, squatted, and defecated on the pavement. There were crowds of people around; nothing happened. I wondered for a moment if I really saw what I saw. I did; it happened. That was my first clue about all of this.

In the lanes of Parvar Poorab, a peaceful North Indian village set amid monsoon-soaked fields, Savita stares suspiciously at the concrete lavatory outside her home. “The government employee who constructed it told me we had to use it now and we shouldn’t go in the open”, says the slight and sombre 22-year-old who goes by only one name.

“But it’s better to go in the open. The pit is very small and will fill up very soon. We only use it in an emergency or at night. I like going outside.”

Millions of Indians like Savita continue to defecate in the open despite having a household toilet, frustrating government hopes to wean more than 600 million of its citizens off the practice and questioning the assumptions behind its mass toilet-building programme.

In rural India, a strong cultural resistance to the build-up and disposal of excrement, and the view that going outdoors is more wholesome, is leading to rejection of the new latrines.

The most pressing reason to banish the practice, as Prime Minister Narendra Modi has vowed to do by 2019, is its effect on public health — spreading infectious diseases and stunting children’s growth by circulating faecal bacteria in the environment.

In this densely packed country, even people using toilets will still be exposed to germs unless everyone in the community abandons their routine of trudging to the nearest field, pond or railway track to relieve themselves.

Which illustrates the difference between a democracy and a totalitarian regime. Mao’s China followed his Four Pests campaign, but found out that contrary to what Mao knew, sparrows were not a pest. Sparrows were actually quite useful in eating insect pests. Whooda thunk it? Similarly, Mao’s being able to get 550 million rural Chinese to follow his cockamamie ideas on how to increase agricultural production resulted in the death of some 30 million.

improved sanitation facilities, rural (% of rural population with access)1990 and 2015
India 5.7% 28.5%
Pakistan 4.9% 51.1%

Pakistan made up the difference- and more.

World Bank link in previous comment.

World Bank: World Development Indicators definitely agree with your point about outdoor defecation: for improved sanitation facilities coverage in 2015, we have 63.5 % for Pakistan versus 39.6% for India. However, in 1990 the difference in 1990 between Pakistan and India for improved sanitation facilities was 23.7% coverage for Pakistan versus 16.8% coverage for India. That indicates to me that religious strictures have less to do with the difference today than different government policies.
In addition, most of the health indicators the World Bank uses point to a slight advantage for India.

Country Name Indicator Name 2015
India Mortality rate, under-5 (per 1,000 live births) 47.7
Pakistan Mortality rate, under-5 (per 1,000 live births) 81.1
India Mortality rate, infant (per 1,000 live births) 37.9
Pakistan Mortality rate, infant (per 1,000 live births)65.8
Pakistan Life expectancy at birth, total (years) 66.4
India Life expectancy at birth, total (years) 68.3
Pakistan Improved water source (% of population with access)91.4
India Improved water source (% of population with access) 94.1
Pakistan Improved sanitation facilities (% of population with access) 63.5
India Improved sanitation facilities (% of population with access) 39.6
Pakistan Health expenditure, total (% of GDP) 2.6
India Health expenditure, total (% of GDP) 4.7
Pakistan Fertility rate, total (births per woman) 3.6
India Fertility rate, total (births per woman) 2.4
India Death rate, crude (per 1,000 people) 7.3
Pakistan Death rate, crude (per 1,000 people) 7.3

“In the Union Square area of San Francisco, the heart of the upscale shopping area, you must now step over not only drunk and drugged people laying on the street, but over the mounds of human feces left everywhere. And for this you get to pay some of the highest housing costs in the nation. The street poles are falling over, eroded by a constant stream of human urine. Special paint is being used to make it splash back on people who pick public walls to piss on.

Welcome to the People’s Republic of California.”

But, but, but … there’s so much need!!!!!

From each according to his ability, to each according to the dictates of the postmodernist bureaucrat: now that’s real social and moral progress.

Your retrograde mentality has misled you into assuming that you have the same rights to life and association which they – the victims of life, or of themselves which amounts to the same thing – do. Not so. Some exist to consume, some, like you, to be consumed. You are a mere dish on the banquet table of leftist sensibilities. The sooner you realize that the happier you will be.

In the Union Square area of San Francisco, the heart of the upscale shopping area, you must now step over not only drunk and drugged people laying on the street, but over the mounds of human feces left everywhere. And for this you get to pay some of the highest housing costs in the nation. The street poles are falling over, eroded by a constant stream of human urine. Special paint is being used to make it splash back on people who pick public walls to piss on.

Welcome to the People’s Republic of California.

I was in the SF Bay area recently and witnessed several of the small tent cities built under various spots along the freeway, in both SF and Oakland. I also observed a marked increase in the number of homeless people meandering the streets of the city. It was interesting to listen to the clueless musings of the locals as to why and how the situation has gotten so much worse in recent years.