The humanitarian and economic case for delivering sanitation to all has been very well established. In 2014, The United Nations (UN) estimated that there is a four-fold return on every dollar invested in water and sanitation and that these savings come in the form of reduced health care costs for individuals and societies around the world. In that same year, India also launched the Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM) – an ambitious program to bring back the policy focus on sanitation and put in place a time-bound plan to improve rural and urban access to toilets across India.

Today, five years later, the government has achieved significant momentum on both these fronts. The mission has demonstrated progress on several parameters – from the rapid buildup of toilets across the country, to making the sanitation conversation a household theme. The mission has unlocked funding for sanitation at the national, state and municipal levels. A nationwide communication campaign, which drove several positive messages on the need for better sanitation, has kept this issue at the front and center of the national policy narrative. The government is now working on the next phase of the mission and is rightly focused on the next set of related and critical outcomes for safe sanitation. These include: ensuring sustainability of the significant progress made on toilet access, ensure continued usage of facilities created and usage; providing sufficient water and connections for sanitation systems to work; and perhaps most importantly, proper collection, containment, treatment, disposal or recycling of fecal waste accumulated in septic tanks and pits.

But what will drive these new set of outcomes? Which approaches and technologies will work in what kind of settings? Experts point to combining innovative sanitation technologies, behavior change communication, building municipal capacities as well as community and citizen ownership and involvement, to drive success and to build sustainability and equity in the mission’s goals.

For many of us, it is easy to take the complexity of the sanitation system for granted. We flush and assume that the waste will be carried to a place of safe treatment (sewage treatment plant). Many of our fellow citizens even in urban India however, lack such an easy fix. Only 30% of urban households are connected to a central sewer system. The remaining 70% households use onsite sanitation (OSS) containment systems, such as septic tanks and pit latrines. To enable safe sanitation for all, therefore, non-sewered, decentralized, and alternate cost – effective and scalable options for safe management of waste generated in these OSS are the need of the hour. The good news is that these are now being set up in some parts of the country.

India is one of the first countries to have announced a national policy on fecal sludge and seepage management (FSSM). Several states have already begun to address this issue on a high priority, with funds and infrastructure being set up for decentralized, non-sewered (off – grid) alternatives. The solution lies in creating fecal sludge treatment plants (FSTPs) where the human waste collected from OSS is transported for treatment. In states like Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Maharashtra, Odisha, Tamil Nadu and Uttar Pradesh, cities are not just establishing FSTPs but are deploying the comprehensive FSSM approach. These cities are successfully demonstrating value across the entire sanitation supply chain: from managing toilets, to safety and wellbeing of sanitation workers engaged in toilet waste emptying and transportation, and finally to sludge treatment via use of appropriate technologies. Further, states are putting equal focus on delegating ownership of management and delivery of sanitation services to local communities. This has led to active involvement of institutions such as slum, ward and city sanitation committees. In fact, in several cases, all-women run Mahila Samitis (gender forums) have been instrumental in driving local messaging on better sanitation and health. The national government is supporting all of these efforts as part of its national policy on FSM and national urban livelihood mission.

As these ‘off-grid’ sanitation systems are deployed in India, the country can also benefit from some of the disruptive sanitation technologies which are being designed globally. This is particularly the case for innovation in the non-sewered category, where the focus is on building more cost-effective, scalable waste treatment technologies. In fact, several Indian companies – Eram Scientific, Ankur Scientific, Tide Technocrats – have already showcased their solutions at the Reinvented Toilet Expo, held in Beijing last year. In addition to leveraging disruptive technologies, in many middle-income and low-income countries, new governance and financing models, are also being rolled out and in several cities, private – public partnerships have been successfully implemented. These new partnership models need to be to be evaluated to see if best practices can be applied in the Indian context.

With SBM-2.0, India is on course to deliver safe and hygienic sanitation to all its citizens. For the mission to achieve its full potential, however, we need to take the next steps towards deploying disruptive toilet-to-treatment technologies, strengthening municipal capacities, driving behavior change efforts and building local community ownership models. Equally important is to channel more funds for sanitation. This, along with the continued political will is the future path to Har Koi, Har Roz, Hamesha.