Verifying open defecation free status: experiences and insights going to scale in India

Verification is a process to assess the open defecation free (ODF) and hygiene status of a community. Certification is the official recognition of ODF achievement. Verification and certification of village sanitation achievement may take place simultaneously, or may be undertaken apart. They may be conducted by the same agency, or by different agencies. There are a wide variety of practices used in verification and certification in different countries, and often within countries. In this paper we present background of the Government of India’s Nirmal Gram Puraskar clean village verification program, our field experiences verifying open defecation free communities, and challenges, opportunities, and recommendations for achieving quality sanitation verification at scale

Talking toilets: evaluating software and hardware oriented rural sanitation approaches in northern India

This paper presents a 2011 study of India’s Total Sanitation Campaign (TSC). Qualitative methods were used to study six villages in Haryana and Uttar Pradesh. The research aimed to determine how implementations and outcomes compare in Community-led Total Sanitation (software-oriented) and conventional (hardware-oriented) TSC approaches. Despite a national guideline that called for a demand-driven, community-led, incentive-based TSC, in reality most interventions were supply-led, infrastructure-centric, and subsidy-based. CLTS interventions were more awareness-focused, involving longer-term interaction with households. In conventional TSC interventions, excessive focus on construction and subsidies drove supply-led tendencies, neglect of software and participation, and exclusion of non-poor and lower-caste households. CLTS villages tended to achieve more sustequitable (sustainable and equitable) access and usage than conventional villages. Levels of local government capacity and village leadership quality were key to intervention success