Key challenges of marginalised communities on sanitation and hygiene and recommendations to clean India

The Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation, Government of India recognizes that equity and inclusion are key to ensuring that everyone’s sanitation needs are met and that no one is left behind. A priority concern of the SBM guidelines is providing access to different categories of people who are not able to use safe sanitation facilities. The guidelines mention the need to take safety and dignity issues into account and provide facilities that are sensitive to the needs of people with disabilities. It also recognizes the specific needs of women and adolescent girls, such as menstrual hygiene management, and allocates resources for awareness and disposal of menstrual hygiene waste. These guidelines are now in the process of being operationalized and rolled out in practice. This paper discusses key challenges and issues of marginalised communities in India regarding sanitation and hygiene and recommendations under Swachh Bharat Mission

Social and psychological impact of limited access to sanitation: MHM and reproductive tract infections

This paper is based on study of SHARE Research Consortium and the Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council (WSSCC) research partnership to investigate the specific impact of inadequate access to water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) facilities on women and girls in India. This study is on social and psychological impact of limited access to sanitation, the link between menstrual hygiene practices and reproductive tract infections, and between WASH practices and pregnancy outcomes in Bhubhaneshwar and Rourkela (Odisha). Millions of women today are denied access or lack the facilities and means to manage the simple biological necessities of defecation and menstruation, and are often forced to adopt a range of coping strategies. The higher incidence of reproductive tract infections linked to poor menstrual hygiene management under socio-economically deprived groups is striking. Also remarkable is the lack of WASH facilities accessible by pregnant women

Pledge for making India open defecation free by 2019: opportunity and challenges

This paper seeks to engage in a critical review of Swachh Bharat Mission (Clean India Campaign) launched by Prime Minister of India on 2nd October, 2014. This national programme seeks to accelerate efforts to achieve universal sanitation coverage for making India open defecation free (ODF) and clean by 2019, as a tribute to the 150th Birth Anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi. This entails improving the levels of cleanliness in rural areas through Solid and Liquid Waste Management activities and making villages Open Defecation Free (ODF), clean and sanitized. The Mission shall strive for this by removing the bottlenecks that were hindering the progress, and focusing on critical issues affecting outcomes. This is a new initiative following the successive failure of three national rural sanitation programmes over last almost three decades: Central Rural Sanitation Program (CRSP); Total Sanitation Campaign (TSC); and Nirmal Bharat Abhiyan (NBA)

Institutionalizing community led action for sanitary surveillance (CLASS) through launch of a reward scheme

In India, the national goal is to provide every rural person with adequate water for drinking and cooking on a sustainable basis. Water supply for drinking and cooking should maintain sufficient quantity and quality. Access to drinking water supply alone is not enough to reduce health problems unless quality is ensured. For instance, bacteriological contamination of drinking water can cause child mortality despite ample water quantity. Reliability of drinking water quality is equally important at both the production and consumption levels. Under the national drinking water supply programme, we have developed and implemented the Community Led Action for Sanitary Surveillance (CLASS) approach to trigger remedial measures for improved access to safe drinking water. We used a World Bank funded reward scheme to motivate communities to adopt CLASS in 35 villages in Uttarakhand, India. We found motivated local self-government members effectively facilitated CLASS, so the approach has potential to become replicable

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

Rapid action towards ODF in Saharanpur District in India: stunting, menstruation and other innovations in CLTS

In 2016, the Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation(MDWS), Government of India (GoI) empanelled competent organizations and individuals to offer on-demand capacity building support and guidance on community wide approaches for sanitation to different districts and states in India. The Water Supply & Sanitation Collaborative Council (WSSCC) is an UN agency and as an empanelled organization for training works closely with the district of Saharanpur towards making it an ODF district. Constantly looking for innovative ways to influence behaviour change, WSSCC deployed new tools of stunting and menstruation to galvanize communities to make Saharanpur an open defecation free district of Uttar Pradesh. It showed startling success in the district within few months without using cash incentive to propel behaviour change. This paper outlines the new methods and tools adopted for community wide approaches, its challenges and outcomes

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

Institutionalizing community led action for sanitary survey

Bacteriological contamination in drinking water is the major source for child mortality. Developing countries are facing problem of cholera, dysentery, diahorrea, typhoid and jaundice. Therefore prevention of bacteriological contamination is necessary for sustainability. In Uttar Pradesh, there are large number of people suffer from water related diseases as they draw unsafe water from private shallow hand pumps and dug wells, which is a major cause of avoidable morbidity and mortality. The only viable option today is developing a process of water quality surveillance, through which people can develop the necessary knowledge and skills to monitor the quality of water they consume, undertake corrective measures and sustain the same on their own. Under National Rural Drinking Water Quality Monitoring and Surveillance Programme, Mr. V.K. Mishra and Mr. Arvind Kr. Singh has developed the Community Led Action for Sanitary Survey (CLASS) is an IEC tool to facilitate community to undertake sanitary survey, water quality bacteriological testing and analysis of all drinking water sources in the village and develop collecting action for remedial measures

Breaking the silence: a new initiative for menstrual hygiene management under the National Sanitation Programme in India

This paper presents the highlights and insights from the Training of Trainers (ToT) on Menstrual Hygiene Management (MHM) Programme, which was run by the Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council (WSSCC) in September, 2013 in New Delhi with the support of Government of India. The first of its kind, this national training initiative was organised with the objective of creating master trainers from states capable of returning to their communities as champions for a deeply stigmatised and taboo issue, an issue which is central to the dignity, health and well-being of women and girls. This event focused on need for building capacity to address the three prongs of MHM, including breaking the silence on taboo subject, incorporating into IEC strategies and encouraging the use of funds under rural national sanitation program Nirmal Bharat Abhiyan (NBA) for safe disposal materials. Government of India has now been included MHM in the NBA