analysis

Updated: Oct 03, 2018 15:50 IST

The six-legged fly, a vector of the faecal-oral route transmission, was the cause of many socio-economic problems in India. Over one lakh children annually succumb to diseases spread by the fly and its vector brethren, primarily due to diarrhoea. Open defecation is the prime cause. For more years than we can count, more than half the people of India, a country of diverse people, cultures and faiths, have faced an unusually unifying question every morning: Where do I squat to answer nature’s call today? In our country of paradoxes, the contrast between being a rising global superpower and having one of the finest demographic dividend on the one hand, and the challenge of one-fourth of our population not having access to sanitation in the form of toilets or sewage treatment systems on the other hand is sadly striking.

The launch of Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM) from the ramparts of the Red Fort on August 15, 2014, was a clarion call by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who no doubt has the conviction and the commitment to make India clean and healthy. The programme had excellent early success, with India moving from 37% sanitation coverage in 2014 to 67% safe sanitation by 2016.

A programme of this scale cannot become a success with merely a push from the top, critical though this is. Currently, the country is home to about 4.5 lakh Swachhagrahis, or foot soldiers, spreading the message of sanitation. Over the years, initiatives such as Swachh Sankalp se Swachh Siddhi, Freedom from Open Defecation Week, Satyagraha se Swachhagraha, Swachh Bharat Summer Internship and Swachhata Hi Seva (SHS) are some of the SBM programs that have propelled the programme into a citizen’s movement. This year, SHS 2018, organised by the ministry of drinking water and sanitation, is looking to reinforce the message of a jan-andolan (citizen’s movement). In the SHS 2017 campaign, an estimated 10 crore Indians had participated to make India clean in just a fortnight.

This year, the SHS campaign commenced on September 15 and will run up to October 2 to coincide with the beginning of Mahatma Gandhi’s 150th birth anniversary celebrations. The campaign will engage government bodies, sportspersons, faith leaders, media persons, the corporate sector and their employees, political leaders, school students, youth, pensioners and Swachhagrahis contributing to the cause of Swachhata. India Sanitation Coalition (ISC) is taking the Swaachta Doot programme, originally conceived and implemented by Hindustan Unilever, to other companies across the country. This is a worker-volunteer programme in which factory employees are the messengers of change.

While the progress made in the past three years is indeed heartening, there is much work to be done, especially in urban India. The large scale migration of our rural population into urban areas has resulted in the mushrooming of slums, with an estimated 15-20% of our population residing in slums where the lack of space makes the provision of individual or even community toilets difficult. In cooperation with the Urban Local Bodies, some corporations have made efforts to alleviate this issue. A good example of this is the Suvidha facility put up by Hindustan Unilever Limited (HUL) in Ghatkopar (Maharashtra) as also the Sulabh International’s pay and use model. Swachh Bharat Mission has worked to build consensus toward a collaborative plan to tackle the sanitation challenge. Unprecedented efforts like Swachh Iconic Places, Swachhata Action Plan, Swachhata Pakhwada, engagement of companies, public sector undertakings, development partners, non-profit organisations and media have helped unite many for a common goal.

To harness the collaborative power of NGOs, development partners, corporations, donors and the government, a few of us started the India Sanitation Coalition in 2015. We have encouraged, hand-held corporations to embrace sanitation, and spend Corporate Social Responsibility funds in support of the country’s sanitation agenda . With a multi-stakeholder approach, a specific thrust has been made to promote the entire value chain of sanitation, based on our BUMT (build, use, maintain and treat) model that addresses not just the building and usage of toilets, but also the treatment of waste generated. Corporations are playing a key role in a wide spectrum of sanitation themes, right from the creation of innovative infrastructure (Havells) to skills development (Kohler, Reckitt Benckiser), behaviour change advocacy (IL&FS, HUL) as well as community engagement. Reckitt Benckiser’s behaviour-change communication specifically through the ‘Dettol — Banega Swachh India’ campaign needs special mention.

Many companies have supported toilets in schools. Some of these best practices are covered in greater detail in my book, Survive or Sink, which presents a holistic approach to the many challenges and opportunities in sustainable development in India and provides recommendations on aspects that need to be considered for the next level of sanitation initiatives or Swachhata 2.0.

With everyone making sanitation their responsibility, the mission is expected to extend to a sustainable open defecation free status for the country. While the progress on the ODF front is resounding, Swachhata 2.0 will need to address the complex issue of urban sanitation. With nearly 75% of the faecal waste (which carries pathogens and disease-carrying bacteria) remains untreated, and finds their way into drains, lakes and rivers, they pose a serious risk to health and overall productivity of the country.

In its newer avatar, the sanitation journey for our country will need to address sustainability with a clear mandate to all sanitation stakeholders. We need to go beyond the building of toilets, and invest in upstream areas of the BUMT chain, especially in faecal waste treatment. If we do not tackle treatment of faecal sludge, we would have embarked on one of the most expensive exercises in history to remove it from our fields by funnelling it into toilets and then dumping it right back into our fields.

With new sanitation policies under the Swachh Bharat Mission, its focus on ODF sustainability, inter-sectoral collaboration and quality without compromising on scale and speed, toilets are fast moving from being a privilege to being a right. And the image of the six-legged fly is now overshadowed by the image of the Late Kunwar Bai (who passed away earlier this year at the age of 106 years), who was felicitated by Prime Minister Modi for building toilets in Rajnandgaon by selling off her goats, and is the real Swachh Bharat Abhiyan mascot.

So, let us celebrate much that has been achieved even as we continue on our journey to achieve ODF status for the country.

Naina Lal Kidwai is Chair, India Sanitation Coalition

The views expressed are personal