Narratives of sanitation: Motivating toilet use in India (original) (raw)
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Current Research Journal of Social Sciences and Humanities
Open defecation is a major blot on India’s overall reputation as an emerging economy as it still remains stubbornly widespread across rural India. The present paper outlines the economic and psychological aspects of toilets construction and their sustainable usage in two districts of the state of Biharviz. Gopalganj& Bhagalpur. Bihar’s performance is not up to the mark with respect to the sanitation figures among other states of India. It was found that households owning a government constructed latrine,still defecate in the open. Study evidences support a preference for open defecation; many survey respondents reported that open defecation was more comfortable and desirable than latrine use. Old people prefer going outside as they are used to this routineand do not mind defecating in the open for the rest of their lives.The study was conducted with an objective to better understand and assess the issues and strategies of behavioural change, policies present in the system and sugges...
International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health
Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, India’s flagship sanitation intervention, set out to end open defecation by October 2019. While the program improved toilet coverage nationally, large regional disparities in construction and use remain. Our study used ethnographic methods to explore perspectives on open defecation and latrine use, and the socio-economic and political reasons for these perspectives, in rural Bihar. We draw on insights from social epidemiology and political ecology to explore the structural determinants of latrine ownership and use. Though researchers have often pointed to rural residents’ preference for open defecation, we found that people were aware of its many risks. We also found that (i) while sanitation research and “behavior change” campaigns often conflate the reluctance to adopt latrines with a preference for open defecation, this is an erroneous conflation; (ii) a subsidy can help (some) households to construct latrines but the amount of the subsidy and the manner of...
India, urban sanitation, and the toilet challenge
2013
This research brief builds upon a literature review and stakeholder interviews in India on urban sanitation to examine the public policy landscape for sanitation innovation in the country. India ranks low in terms of sanitation coverage; the country experiences very high rates of open defecation and significant use of unimproved toilets. The majority of fecal sludge goes untreated into waterways in urban areas. India's demographic trends show rapid urban growth, both geographically and in terms of population, which is also expanding the gap in access to improved sanitation in urban areas. Adequate government funding and policy implementation is lacking. The past focus on centralized sewerage systems and simple on-site sanitation is not an acceptable default option, nor is it technically feasible or financially viable given growth patterns. Groundbreaking new technology, management, and operational models are required to solve the sanitation challenge at scale. Recent attention f...
Barriers in Implementation of Sanitation Projects: A Case Study of Open Defecation Free (ODF) India
Journal of Development Economics and Management Research Studies, 2021
Despite strong emphasis of government to make India open Defecation free by 2019, open defecation is widespread in India. It is equally widespread in the state of Uttar Pradesh. It is known that good health has strong impact on the overall productivity of an individual. It is also known that good sanitation and hygiene conditions are prere of good health. People are not willing to change their habits and behaviour for healthy sanitation practices. Despite repeated efforts of government to change the behaviour of people regarding construction and use of toilet, people are not changing their habits. Our report presents evidence from the survey data collected from the rural households of Suriyawan block from Bhikarirampur village of Bhadohi district of Uttar Pradesh. More than 70 percent of people we interviewed, told that they do not have enough money for constructing toilet because more than 75 percent of the people think that constructing a toilet requires anything between INR 20,000-30,000. They do not have the idea about the low cost toilets, which they could have easily afforded and used. Also there is a wide spread belief among people that the low cost twin-pits toilets constructed by the government are of inferior quality. Families having working toilet inside home also had at least one member who defecates out in the open. We found that there are many false beliefs among people about open defecation. They possess the mind-set that open defecation improves their health as they get fresh air and defecate in the open in an open space. Females believe that using household toilet causes headache and sickness. Many believe that household toilets require more water, therefore it's better to defecate in the open. Male members considered household toilet are for only females. Another important finding was lot of people do not want to construct a toilet because they think maintenance and cleanliness of the latrine is a big headache. These findings 1 We would like to thank the management and faculty members of Xavier School of Rural Management, Bhubaneshwar, particularly Prof T Kumar, as well as Fundamental Action and Research Foundation, particularly Mr Ramdutt Mishra, Mr Rishi Raj Mishra and family of Bhikarirampur, UP, for facilitating our field visit.
The World Health Organization has identified open defecation as a public health problem, with 620 million people practicing it worldwide. Latrines are not just an issue of sanitation or hygiene, but also related to privacy, dignity and equity. Despite existing sanitation programmes in India, open defecation continues and several constructed toilets remain unused. This study explored the reasons for the same. The decision towards submission towards this conference was made based on its scope to include multi-disciplinary papers on water and sanitation and behavioural change. Method: A qualitative design was used for this exploratory study based in Bhawal village, Mandla District, Madhya Pradesh. Fifteen interviews (six men, four women, one senior citizen, two children, one block officer and one district coordinator) and four focus group discussions (one each with youth, village health and sanitation committee, self-help group and local activists) were conducted using discussion guides. The interviews and discussions were audio recorded and transcribed. A thematic analysis of the qualitative data was done using MS Word and NVivo. Results: The main issues identified were the lack of awareness about the health impacts of open defecation, preference for open environment, water scarcity, lack of interest towards sanitation by local self government, poor fund management, non-availability of construction materials, poverty, corruption, poor construction quality and poor monitoring of sanitation programme. Conclusions and Recommendations: Efforts in 2009 under the Nirmal Bharat Abhiyan to improve sanitation were focused towards construction of toilets but not towards empowering the community to adopt toilets. Also, poor implementation of sanitation programme is comparable with similar status of other governmental services, such as the health system. In addition, cultural factors played a role (Bhawal is a Gond tribal village). Several experiences from across the world have shown that construction of toilets alone is inadequate to prevent open defecation. There is a need for concomitant strengthening of local water management and behavioural change through community led approaches keeping rights and responsibilities in mind.
Understanding Open Defecation in Rural India
India has far higher open defecation rates than other developing regions where people are poorer, literacy rates are lower, and water is relatively more scarce. In practice, government programmes in rural India have paid little attention in understanding why so many rural Indians defecate in the open rather than use affordable pit latrines. Drawing on new data, a study points out that widespread open defecation in rural India is on account of beliefs, values, and norms about purity, pollution, caste, and untouchability that cause people to reject affordable latrines. Future rural sanitation programmes must address villagers’ ideas about pollution, pit-emptying, and untouchability, and should do so in ways that accelerate progress towards social equality for Dalits rather than delay it.
The American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene
The Sustainable Development Goals have set an ambitious target to end open defecation by 2030 by building private household toilets. These toilets are categorized based on quality indicators. However, toilets that are shared among households are considered “limited,” disincentivizing governments and implementers from investing in this infrastructure despite being more appropriate in certain contexts. Furthermore, unlike private toilets, shared toilets are not distinguished based on their quality. As such, there is a need to understand what attributes constitute well-managed shared toilets. These types of facilities could play an important role in helping people move up the sanitation ladder away from open defecation in certain contexts. Therefore, we conducted 41 one-on-one in-depth interviews with users of managed shared sanitation facilities. We found that maintenance and accessibility are key indicators of well-managed shared sanitation. Maintenance includes the provision of wate...
Sanitation Practices and Policies in India: Exploring Determinants and their Interlinkages
A B S T R A C T India, one of the emerging economies of the world, is plagued with prevalence of inadequate and poor sanitation facilities. Unhealthy hygiene practices and menace of open defecation still persist in the country which seeks to be counted as one of the superpowers. While some of the poor countries of the world fare better than India in terms of sanitation, it becomes essential to look beyond economic factors to understand the problem. The problems are manifold and appear in many dimensions. While sixty percent of population does not have access to toilet facilities, the instances of non-utilisation of existing toilet facilities are also reported. The non-utilisation of existing toilet facilities may range from planning related concerns to attitudinal issues. The planning or policy related concerns stem from problems related to maintenance of toilets, lack of plumbing and drainage facilities, lack of water and sewage systems etc. To understand these problems and the efforts to address them, critical evaluation of sanitation policies is needed. Sanitation policies and perceptions of masses towards sanitation practices can be complementary factors for cost of access to sanitation facilities. This paper seeks to look into the factors affecting inadequate sanitation facilities from a broader point of view focussing on policy and practices. The paper utilises secondary sources and a case study to unravel the factors and their interlink-ages. Special Issue on: Recent Advances in Biodegradation, Sanitation, and Bioremediation Editors: Soumya Chatterjee, Mukesh Kumar Meghvansi, and Vijay Veer
An untold story of policy failure: the Total Sanitation Campaign in India
Water Policy, 2013
The Total Sanitation Campaign (TSC) was a community-led, people-centred, demand-driven and incentivebased programme ideal to address India's rural sanitation crisis, or so it seemed. But policy failed to translate into practice and outcomes were remarkably poor. In the 2011 census data showed 31% sanitation coverage in 2011 (up from 22% in 2001), far from the 68% reported by the Government. The decade has witnessed progress slowing down and the number of rural households without latrines increasing by 8.3 million. This article draws on evidence from two coordinated studies in four Indian states. It aims to explore the dichotomy of TSC policy and practice, its causes, and the potential of the new sanitation campaign, the Nirmal Bharat Abhiyan (NBA). The study found that TSC implementation was unaligned with the programme's guiding principles. In reality the TSC was government-led, infrastructure-centred, subsidy-based and supply-led, leading to poor outcomes. The reasons behind the theory-practice gap include low political priority; flawed monitoring; distorting accountability and career incentives; technocratic and paternalistic inertia; and corruption. In the new NBA, despite promising changes such as a stronger demand creation focus, key issues hampering implementation remain ignored. It is thus doomed to fail, burdened by known past hurdles.
Shifting social norms to reduce open defecation in rural India
Behavioural Public Policy
Toilet ownership in India has grown in recent years, but open defecation can persist even when rural households own latrines. There are at least two pathways through which social norms inhibit the use of toilets in rural India: (1) beliefs/expectations that others do not use toilets or latrines or find open defecation unacceptable; and (2) beliefs about ritual notions of purity that dissociate latrines from cleanliness. A survey in Uttar Pradesh, India, finds a positive correlation between latrine use and social norms at baseline. To confront these, an information campaign was piloted to test the effectiveness of rebranding latrine use and promoting positive social norms. The intervention targeted mental models by rebranding latrine use and associating it with cleanliness, and it made information about growing latrine use among latrine owners more salient. Following the intervention, open defecation practices went down across all treatment households, with the average latrine use sc...