A newly published research study by the India WASH Forum that took
place in rural Indian villages has identified and analysed key barriers and
motivators of change in sanitation and hygiene behaviour.
The WHO funded study
entitled “Formative
Research to Develop Appropriate Participatory Approaches towards Water,
Sanitation and Hygiene in Rural Areas” was conducted in the states
of Gujarat, Telangana, and Jharkhand in India in 2015 and 2016.
“We believe this is a
credible intensive research undertaken by India WASH Forum on the basic
questions of why people are using, not using and not building toilets. These
questions need to be asked repeatedly and the deeper motivation and barriers
explored and addressed for improved sanitation and hygiene behaviours,”
explained Depinder Kapur, a member of the core team of research.
Research questions included – “Are there barriers to sanitation
arising owing to the lack of knowledge and ignorance about the benefits of
having and using toilets or from a deeper level of self-perception barriers of
caste, class and gender? Who among village habitants are adopting building and
using toilets and why? At what threshold level are more people willing to adopt
or change their behaviors to start building and using toilets? What is the role
of Behavior Change Communication (BCC) messaging and how is it perceived by the
people? Why is it not working?”
Sanitation and Hygiene Understanding
The research
documented in detail the current sanitation and hygiene practices of rural
communities, developing an understanding why people behave the way they do and
why building and using toilets remains a challenge in rural India.
It explains why people
have a high level of cultural sensibility and knowledge of personal hygiene and
cleanliness of their home environment, yet their understanding does not
translate into adoption of safe sanitation and hygiene practices.
For example, one of
the most common findings was that the awareness on the transmission of diseases
through oral faecal route is highly limited in all the villages.
Moreover, the study
highlighted that people do not attribute lack of sanitation to be the primary
cause for major illness but think that it is due to a lack of proper nutrition,
hard physical labour or general weakness of the human system over the years
from early marriage, child birth, weakness from repeated attacks of malaria and
viral fevers, etc.
Subsistence
livelihoods and living conditions, generate a lower hope for improvement.
“Aspirations for a
better quality and healthy life do not include sanitation and toilet in their
list of priorities,” the report reads.
Notions of purity and
cleanliness (purity is not equated with cleanliness, hence higher caste and
purer people may display a poor hygiene standard) are very different in some
tribal areas. A belief that open defecation is a safer sanitation management practice—not
related to notions of purity-, dominates the tribal communities and other lower
castes.
Barriers
The research
highlights and analyses several barriers to sanitation and hygiene in those
rural areas. Among those are financial limitations, physical limitations but
also gender inequalities.
“Low sanitation
coverage could be an outcome of material conditions of the lack of water and
space for toilets, as well as a result of subsistence livelihoods.”
The sanitation
situation often varies from one village to another, with growing density of
population, the practices of open defecation are shrinking, which promotes
people to build toilets. However, where open spaces are plenty, there is often
less pressure to build toilets.
Gender barriers to sanitation uptakes are not as simple as they
appear.
“Many women, girls and
elderly do feel a desperate need for toilet, but they think that it is
unreasonable to make the demand considering the financial crisis of the family
and the struggle of their parents or head of the family,” explains the report.
Although men make most
financial decisions including construction of a toilet, women said that they
understood and agreed with the men whenever financial stress was a limiting
factor.
There is an acute
agrarian crisis in rural India and its impact on rural sanitation cannot be
explained in gender relations alone.
Sanitation: a needed goal for the
country
India faces the
challenge of having the most number of people in the world defecating in the
open and also has a burgeoning crisis of untreated faecal waste that is
contaminating surfaces and ground water creating an imminent health crisis.
The research
recommends the need to identify appropriate BCC messages from the perspective
of the people and not of the implementation agencies (donor or government or
NGOs) or from the skills and practices of some agencies who have employed
commercial or social marketing approaches to sell products.
“Sanitation behavior
change should not be reduced to selling toilets to people,” reads the report.
“WASH Behaviour Change
messages are perceived for urban audiences, stereotyping rural people as
ignorant and dirty. BCC messages in WASH should begin by honouring and
respecting the hard physical labour and their dirty hands and feet. Only then
should the hand washing and toilets message follow.”
Both motivating people
to build and to use toilets is emerging as a major national priority as
outlined in the Swachh Bharat Mission (Clean India Mission) initiated in
October 2014 by Prime Minister Narendra Modi for achieving open defecation free
India by 2nd October 2019.
“For a large country
like India, with different social and economic contexts, this research tried to
take more than a snapshot of the rural sanitation reality of India,” explained
the report.
SOURCE: WSSCC
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