Even as his drinking water and sanitation department tied up with DRDO on Thursday to set up bio-digestor toilets in 1,000 village panchayats across the country, Union rural development minister Jairam Ramesh could not resist taking a couple of jocular swipes at the huge annual funds allocated to the defence ministry.
Just the cost of a single Rafale fighter — MoD is finalizing the acquisition of 126 of these French jets in the almost $20 billion MMRCA project — could make 1,000 village panchayats ``free from open-defecation'', said Ramesh.