Abstract
Although our rural and urban
areas are suffering from inadequate sanitation infrastructures, one successful
solution can be conducting extensive behaviour change campaigns to involve
citizens in the development of such infrastructures. Building facilities for
safe water and sanitation alone will not be sufficient in a country like ours.
Introduction
Our cities and rural areas are
facing multiple crises due to inadequate sanitation infrastructures in our
country. To clearly understand what this means, let us first broadly categorise
them under Rural and Urban. A simple sanitation chain needs to collect and
isolate human waste, safely transmit this waste, and then treat this waste
before reusing it or letting it out in the environment [1]. It can be fairly
assumed that in urban areas a sewer system exists but it is not robust enough
to fight the growing population density of the areas. There are various health
issues noticed in the poor sections of urban areas i.e. 50 million people who
don’t have access to proper sanitation arrangements and the improper management
of the solid & liquid waste has been polluting land and water bodies.
According to a study done in 2008, only 30% of India’s population had access to
improved sanitation practices. This increases the cases of open defecation
among the poorest strata of society. When it comes to livelihoods, the urban
poor also bears the highest per capita income losses due to inadequate
sanitation [2].
In the rural areas, it is found
that technology spreads faster than information and understanding and the
implication of such technology. According to a UN report [3], more people have
access to mobile phones than toilets in India. For a very long time, both
household and community toilets in rural areas, have been using septic tanks; a
technology prevalently adopted from urban areas. The cleaning mechanism of a
septic tank is not suitable for rural areas mostly because of two reasons –
lack of sewage systems and lack of cleaning service providers via mechanical
extraction. Hence, septic tanks ended up discharging the water waste outside
the houses which leads to stagnation and diseases.
This lack of adequate sanitation
infrastructures as well as unsafe practices is a major cause of diseases like
Diarrhoea, and other water-borne diseases, which have been fatal to children
under five years of age globally.
Scenario and Efforts
When we talk about the
development of sanitation practices in rural areas, the Swachh Bharat Mission
(SBM) strikes the mind. The mission, although launched in 2014, was a rebranded
version of the Total Sanitation Campaign (TSC) and Nirmal Bharat Abhiyan
(NBA) launched in 1999 and 2012 respectively. For the Phase-1, the Swachh
Bharat Mission, administratively, has two arms – first, Swachh Bharat
Mission-Grameen (SBM-G) under the aegis of the Ministry of Drinking Water and
Sanitation and second, Swachh Bharat Mission-Urban (SBM-Urban) under the aegis
of Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs. SBM-G aims to eradicate open
defecation in rural areas, create awareness about safe sanitation, and improve
solid-liquid waste management practices in the long run. It is important to
understand that only providing household/community toilets is going to work in
rural areas, they also need to be educated about them. Rural areas are a
close-knit social sector where the community bonding is still stronger than in
their urban counterparts, hence, Community-Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) [4] models
have been effective in generating awareness and motivating the citizens to
construct toilets for themselves without using the Government subsidy. The
Government had a provision of providing monetary support of Rs.12000/- per
Individual Household Latrine (IHHL) to achieve the vision of Swachh Bharat by
2nd October 2019. However, the CLTS teams have been parallelly working closely
with the rural population in educating and motivating them to build toilets for
themselves and their families. Even when the district administration got many
toilets constructed in the rural areas, using them did not become a regular
practice for most people for a long time. Coming out of a decades-long habit of
open defecation takes time, effort, patience, constant communication, and
monitoring. Regular monitoring & evaluation, and running behaviour change
awareness campaigns (print, audio-visual, plays, slogans, wall paintings etc)
were widespread. Another crucial part of the rural sanitation supply chain was
played by the twin pit pour flush toilets [5] invented by Shri Bindeshwar
Pathak, founder of the Sulabh Sanitation Movement. This twin-pit pour-flush
toilet technology does not require human intervention as compared to septic
tanks with soak pits.
The Swachh Bharat Mission-Urban
teams focus on improving the sanitation chain in urban and semi-urban areas. In
these areas the human excreta generated is not disposed of sustainably, thus
impacting the health conditions of the urban poor, women, children, and the
elderly, which covers more than 20% of the total urban population [6]. The
age-old practice of manual scavenging is still prevalent, although the state
administration, advocacy groups, and organisations such as Safai Karamchari
Andolan have been instrumental in abolishing this custom to some extent. In
Phase-2, we must concentrate on ODF+ i.e., operation and maintenance of
community/public toilets and solid-liquid waste management. The twin pits
used in rural sanitation programs help generate manure from human waste. From
both, the urban and rural, sanitation points of view, solid waste
(biodegradable & non-biodegradable) and liquid (black water and grey water
waste) must be properly disposed of and composting & wastewater treatment
technologies must be implemented.
Conclusion
The fundamental goal of providing
adequate sanitation infrastructures is to transform India into a hygienic,
sanitised, and community-driven healthy rural and urban area. The on-ground
development of better public and environmental health requires effective
Information, Education, & Communication (IEC) campaigns for behaviour
change and regular monitoring & evaluation of the quality procedures that
are being implemented to align with the Sustainable Development Goals. More
than 90% of India has toilets no and about 5lakh villages have been declared
ODF, however, the task at hand is getting bigger. Efforts must continue to
ensure the sustainability of our current sanitation infrastructures.
References:
- Carr, R (2001), “Excreta-related
infections and the role of sanitation in the control of transmission”, in L
Fewtrell and J Bartram (editors), Water Quality: Guidelines, Standards and
Health, World Health Organization/IWA Publishing, London, pages 89–114.
- WSP-esi-india.pdf
- Mobile
telephones more common than toilets in India, UN report finds | | UN News
- The CLTS
approach | Community-Led Total Sanitation (communityledtotalsanitation.org)
- Twin Pits for Pour
Flush | SSWM - Find tools for sustainable sanitation and water management!
- https://mohua.gov.in/upload/uploadfiles/files/NUSP_0.pdf
- Urban
sanitation in India: key shifts in the national policy frame - Kavita Wankhade,
2015 (sagepub.com)
