{"id":1196,"date":"2019-02-05T10:00:51","date_gmt":"2019-02-05T10:00:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/idronline.org\/2020\/12\/23\/sanitation-efforts-must-focus-on-quality-equity-and-social-inclusion\/"},"modified":"2026-01-14T23:37:35","modified_gmt":"2026-01-14T18:07:35","slug":"sanitation-efforts-must-focus-on-quality-equity-and-social-inclusion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/idronline.org\/kn-in\/sanitation-efforts-must-focus-on-quality-equity-and-social-inclusion\/","title":{"rendered":"Sanitation efforts must focus on quality, equity, and social inclusion"},"content":{"rendered":"

In November 2018, three teams working on sanitation in India came together for a learning exchange funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation<\/a>. Members from Gram Vikas (GV)<\/a>, Emory University<\/a> and the International Initiative for Impact Evaluation (3ie)<\/a> visited villages in the Indian state of Odisha where both Emory and GV are implementing sanitation programmes alongside the Indian government’s Swachh Bharat Mission<\/em> (SBM).<\/p>

SBM’s goal is to achieve an open defecation-free India by October 2019.  This is a daunting task, as studies<\/a> show that despite having access to a latrine, rural Indian households still prefer defecating in the open for a variety of reasons, such as the fear of having to empty the latrine pit and lack of water at, or near, the latrine. Odisha, in particular, is considered one of the slow performers under SBM. According to the National Family Health Survey (2015-16), only 35 percent of the households<\/a> have access to an improved or unimproved latrine.<\/p>

Emory and GV have taken very different approaches to promote latrine use. Leveraging our different organisational perspectives (evaluation funder, practitioner, and researcher), our goal for the exchange was to learn about how these sanitation behaviour change programmes have worked on the ground. We were looking for answers to the questions of what works and doesn’t, to promote latrine use in rural Odisha, and how the lessons learned could inform future sanitation policy.<\/p>

\"What<\/a><\/div>

The long game vs short game approach<\/h3>

[quote]GV uses water as an incentive to encourage community commitment to build this infrastructure.[\/quote]GV’s MANTRA programme<\/a> focuses on community-led construction of a twin-pit, pour flush latrine with attached bathroom for all households in a village. GV uses water as an incentive to encourage community commitment to build this infrastructure. It builds a community water tank that supplies 24-hour piped water to the kitchen, bathroom, and latrine of every household. However, the water is only ‘turned on’ if each household contributes to a community corpus fund and builds sanitation infrastructure.<\/p>

While a significant proportion of the construction costs are covered through government subsidies, community members are expected to contribute labour and materials. GV facilitates the setup of a sanitation committee, which has equal gender and caste representation. Given the scale and effort required, this programme takes an average of three years to implement; it’s a long game approach.<\/p>

For our learning exchange, we visited three MANTRA villages—Samyapalli (programme completed in 1992), Kamapalli (currently in latrine construction phase), and Bahalpur (completed in 2004).<\/p>

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\"sanitation

Community meetings were held for members to decide how to make their village clean, healthy, and beautiful.<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p>

Emory’s Sundara Grama (Beautiful Village) programme<\/a><\/em>, on the other hand, is a low-cost, scalable intervention—a short game approach. It was designed for an impact evaluation that is part of 3ie’s Promoting Latrine Use in Rural India Programme<\/a> and was rolled out within six months. It included the following community activities:<\/p>