Elizabeth Atkinson, from Carhampton, who is living in the Indian city of Udaipur for two months, looks at the problem of kuda (rubbish) in the latest of her weekly letters on the unexpected similarities between life in the state of Rajasthan and West Somerset.

Her letter this week begins: We all generate household waste – far too much of it.

In Britain, we manage to keep it out of sight in bins, bags and boxes, and once it is collected, we forget about it. And when waste is more obvious, as it is in India, we find it upsetting.

But in Britain, we actually generate more than twice as much waste per person as the people who put their rubbish out onto the streets here in Udaipur. And it’s easy to forget that we are all actually engaged in the same tricky process - household waste disposal. ...