Sanitation in India

— Dr H K Goswami The Report of the WHO Commission on Social Determinants of Health (2008) emphasises that access to clean water and sanitation should be considered as part of human rights. The report calls for improved living conditions, including basic services and also for “a public sector strong, capable, committed and adequately funded” to tackle the inequalities in health. It also throws light on the fact that one billion people the world over live in slums with poor basic services. Another report, “Safe Water, Better Health” (2008), brings out that 7.5 per cent of deaths in India, 10 per cent in Bangladesh, 13.6 per cent in Pakistan and 10.6 per cent in Nepal are due to water and sanitation related causes. As the data seems to be based only on reported deaths, this percentage would increase if the cases of the vast majority of unreported deaths were included. Yet, the report is significant. It brings out further that 88 per cent of the cases of diarrhea worldwide are attributable to unsafe water, inadequate sanitation or insufficient hygiene.

The target 10 of goal 7 of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) envisages to reduce by half the number of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation by 2015. Government of India’s Total Sanitation Campaign (TSC) aims at providing toilets to all rural households by the end of the Eleventh Plan, that is, 2012. The Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission and other programmes are aimed at 100 per cent sanitation coverage in the urban areas. India’s Total Sanitation Campaign also aims at providing information, education and communication to the rural poor in sustainable use of the toilets. However, the current percentage of household with toilets is only 49 per cent as per 2006 figures quoted in the Eleventh Plan.

Household toilets are also a matter of human dignity. An advertisement issued by the Ministry of Rural Development, Government of India, with the title : “Do not wake up into darkness, awake into sunlight”, sums it up. The advertisement shows a woman holding a bucket in her hand and on the way from her house to find a suitable place which gives her some semblance of privacy to defecate. To bring out the contrast, the advertisement also shows another woman going into the toilet in her house with the morning sun’s rays very much on. The privacy concerns of the second woman are met by the household toilet, and therefore, she does not have to carry a bucket and move around before the sunrise to find a place for defecation.

Significantly, the Eleventh Five Year Plan (2007-2012) of India targets to achieve universal sanitation coverage in the country by 2012. This target in fact, is obviously far more ambitious than the MDG stipulation to halve by 2015 the number of people without sustainable access to basic sanitation. The Eleventh Plan has also recognised the gender dimension of sanitation by highlighting the need for women in particular to have privacy in defecation. In this connection, it needs to be noted that covered toilets, which ensures privacy, began to be funded only from 2006. The Plan targets to build 7.29 crore household toilets in rural areas for achieving universal sanitation, under the Total Sanitation Campaign. The Total Sanitation Campaign also has a component for school sanitation under which more than three lakh toilets were built in schools during the Tenth Plan. It is, however, equally important to make sure that these toilets do function. School children have also supported the TSC in spreading the message of sanitation to their families.

A former Secretary of the Planning Commission, NC Saxena notes that there is a remarkable increase in the number of toilets constructed in India, which has risen from 1.3 million in 1997-98 to 9 million in 2006-07 and was expected to touch one crore in 2007-08. But, all this put together, would cover only 40 million households leaving out 70 million households without toilets in the rural areas alone. It is, however, encouraging to note that according to an evaluation study, 80 per cent of the toilets built under TSC were used, which signifies a welcome change in attitudes. This shows an effective demand for household toilets which needs to be attended to. There is also a steep increase in the number of Nirmal Gram Puraskars awarded in recent years. The Nirmal Gram Puraskars are awarded to Gram Panchayats which have achieved 100 per cent coverage of household sanitation, 100 per cent school sanitation and have eliminated open defecation in their area. Five thousand Gram Panchayats were awarded Nirmal Gram Puraskar in 2006-07, while in 2007-08, this number rose to 11,000. This further underlines the increasing demand for household toilets, which needs to be satisfied by not only supplying them but ensuring the availability of water and awareness building for their clean and sustainable use.

Meanwhile, the Third South Asian Conference on Sanitation (SACOSAN) was held in New Delhi from November 16 to November 21, 2008. The six-day event was hosted in the national capital in collaboration with the Union Government’s Department of Drinking Water Supply. The SACOSAN brought together government delegations, policy makers, technical specialists, development partners and civil society activists from the South Asian countries, namely, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Myanmar, Bhutan, Afghanistan, Maldives and India to focus attention on crucial gaps affecting lakhs of people living in the region in accessing sanitation.

Addressing the concluding session of the SACOSAN on November 21, 2008, Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee said that the Rs 2 crore allocated to the MPs under the MPs local area development (LAD) scheme for small developmental works in their respective constituencies should be used for sanitation as long as the scheme continues. “It should be among the primary concern of all governments to provide every citizen access to at least minimum sanitation facilities within the shortest possible time”, he said.
(The writer is former Principal, Mangaldoi College). ASSAM TRIBUNE