Rural Sanitation in India

BACK GROUNDER

Of the estimated 2.4 billion people who have no access to sanitation facilities, 600 million are thought to be in South Asia. According to the 2001 Census data, only 21.9 percent of the rural population in India had access to latrines. Inadequate sanitation has been a major cause for many diseases in developing countries such as India. Low awareness of the potential health and economic benefits of better sanitation and hygiene practices, perception of high costs of having a household toilet, the perceived convenience of open defecation and inadequate involvement of local self-governments and communities have kept the sanitation status low.
Sanitation Policy of India

India’s first nationwide program for rural sanitation, the Central Rural Sanitation Programme (CRSP), was launched in 1986 with the objective of improving the quality of life of rural people. The programme was supply-driven, highly subsidized, and gave emphasis on toilet construction. This could not give encouraging results. Later, during the turn of the century in the year 1999, a demand-driven, low-cost sanitation approach with focus on a mass level campaign was launched. This is popularly known as, “ Total Sanitation Campaign –TSC’. It promotes the ending of open defecation; safe disposal of human excreta, better hygiene practices, solid and liquid waste management as well as rural environmental sanitation. It aims at achieving TOTAL SANITATION by the year 2012. In this program, capital subsidies for household toilets have been replaced by motivations and incentives. Sanitation and hygiene education in rural schools is being promoted. Technology options to meet stakeholders preferences and affordability and intensive mobilization & IEC campaign involving all stakeholders, are important components of the strategy.
Nirmal Gram Puraskar (NGP)

Following the success of TSC program, the Government of India (GOI) introduced the Nirmal Gram Puraskar (Clean Village Award) in October 2003. Villages (Gram Panchayats) are eligible to apply for this award on achieving collective outcomes such as universal coverage of toilets and free from open defecation, school sanitation coverage and the maintenance of a ‘clean environment’. Reward for a village is based on population size. The reward amount ranges from US$1,000-US$11,000. The numbers of NGP awards have increased dramatically. It was 4 in the year 2005, 770 in the year 2006 and 4,959 in the year 2007. In the current year, nearly 30,300 Panchayats have applied for the award. With the present growth rate, it is expected that all the Panchayats in the country will qualify for the award by the year 2012.
Drivers for Achievements

· Political will and the creation of an enabling environment

· A robust third party monitoring system is put in place by the Government of India

· Capacity building and communication

· Concurrent monitoring, evaluation, and research

Goals

An ambitious goal has been set in 1999 by the GOI to increase coverage in all the 578 rural districts of the country. The goals included, catalyzing of the construction of (i) 118 million toilets at the household level (ii) 11.2 million toilets for schools, (iii) 0.4 million toilets for child care centers, (iv) 28,000 community level sanitary complexes and (v) 4,000 rural sanitary marts/production centers.

Financial Allocations

The Government has put aside a total of US$2,983.10 million, which includes a community share of US$ 445.18 million, with additional resources available for incentives for well performing local governments. The resource allocation has been substantially increased annually from US$31.34 million (2002-03) to US$235.56 million (2007-08).

Achievements

These efforts have resulted in significant changes in the status of the sanitation in the country. In 2001, the year of the national census, India had toilet coverage of about 21 percent. Sample studies conducted by the GOI and other agencies have indicated a usage rate of between 60 to 80 percent, with significant variation across and within different states. The task at that time of the universal coverage for the rural areas of the country, even reaching the MDG targets by 2015, seemed daunting. The challenge was sought to be addressed through the TSC. This campaign brought in the requisite political will of the country, along with the required financial resources. The progress under the TSC has been significant, with some surveys estimating that at an average 2.8 million individual household latrines (IHLs) have been constructed annually over the 2001-2005 period. A significant achievement has been the construction of 0.4 million-school toilets, 0.15 million-child care center toilets, and 8,000 rural sanitary marts. Women self-help groups/youth groups and local CBOs and NGOs mostly manage these. The community making a contribution of US$215 million till now demonstrates the success of the TSC. The geometric rate by which the increase has been achieved makes the ambitious goal of achieving universal coverage in the rural areas of the country by 2012 an achievable one. This involves providing 115 million household toilets over the next five years (2008-2012) and achieving open defecation-free status across rural India.