As per the most recent Swachhta Status Report in 2015, more
than half of the rural population (52.1 per cent) of the country still
defecates in open.
Eliminating Open Defecation in India by 2nd October 2019 –
the 150th birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi – is one of the key aims of the
Swachh Bharat Abhiyan movement launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi two
years ago on Gandhi Jayanti.
As per the most recent Swachhta Status Report of the
National Sample Survey Office (NSSO), in 2015, more than half of the rural
population (52.1 per cent) of the country still defecates in open —a major
public health and sanitation problem.
How does India compare with other countries?
India fares poorly. According to data compiled by r.i.c.e,
Sub-Saharan Africa, which had 65 per cent of the GDP per capita of India, had
only about half of the rural open defecation compared to India.
In Bangladesh, only 5 per cent of rural people defecate in
the open, significantly lower than that in India.
Access to toilets
The Swachhta Status Report finds that 45.3 per cent
households in rural areas reported having access to a sanitary toilet whereas,
in urban areas, 88.8 per cent households reported having sanitary toilets.
Sanitary toilet is one which ensures safe confinement and disposal of faeces
and does not require the need for human handling.
Comparable data from various rounds of NSSO show that access
to latrines has improved both in rural and urban India. In 1993, 85.8 per cent
of rural households didn’t have access to a latrine. By 2012, the number was
reduced to 59.4 per cent.
Does access to toilet ensure usage?
This is one of the key policy questions regarding Open
Defecation and also the one which is the most debated. Should the government
focus on building more toilets—increase access, or on encouraging people to use
toilets—behaviour change?
Based on findings from NSSO’s Swachhta Status Report, one
can conclude that access implies usage. The survey found that among the
households having a sanitary toilet, 95.6 percent people were using it. “It may
be seen that for the rural households having a sanitary toilet, the usage
percentage was very high across all categories [age, gender],” the report says.
As per another NSSO survey, in 2012, just 1.7 percent of the
households in rural areas and 0.2 percent of the households in urban areas had
access to latrine but not using them.
Can access to toilet change personal preferences? The
question remains unanswered due to lack of official data. Diane Coffey from
r.i.c.e argues that the NSSO survey is not designed to tell us what will happen
if the government builds latrines for people who don't have them.
“The vast majority of latrines in rural India cost at least
20,000 rupees and has large pits that are mechanically emptied, or never
emptied. The government provides latrines that have soak pits that need to be
emptied manually. Villagers think that only Dalits can do this work,” Ms Coffey
told The Hindu.
Note that under Swachh Bharat Mission (Gramin), the support
for building an individual toilet is Rs. 12,000.
Toilet construction
The pace of toilet construction increased in 2015-16,
government data says.But the toilet construction numbers are not always reliable,
as was found by an audit report by Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of
India that was released in December 2015.
The CAG found that during the UPA-II
regime, governments of at least 16 states exaggerated the data on individual
household toilets by over 190 per cent of the actual constructions.
Dysfunctional toilets
Further, the CAG report said that of the constructed
toilets, around 30 per cent were found to be dysfunctional. A Niti Aayog report of Sub-Group of Chief Ministers on
Swachh Bharat Abhiyan states that “the visible improvement in toilet coverage
across Indian states is deeply undermined by the poor quality of operation and
maintenance of these facilities.”
As per the All India Baseline survey conducted by Ministry
of Drinking Water and Sanitation in 2012-13, 1.39 crore of the total 7.41 crore
household toilets in India were defunct or dysfunctional.
“Financial assistance provided under the previous Government
programmes was inadequate and led to the improper construction of toilets,
which slowly became dysfunctional,” the NITI Aayog report states.
Budgetary allocation
According to Accountability Initiative, allocations for
Swachh Bharat Abhiyan (Gramin) increased over threefold from Rs. 2,850 crore in
FY 2014-15 to Rs. 9,000 crore in FY 2016-17. Part of this jump is due to the
introduction of the SBM (Swachh Bharat Mission) cess in November 2015.
Behavior Change
Behaviour change is a key priority of the Swachh Bharat
Abhiyan as sanitation is a behavioural issue, central government says. “It
involves a change of mindset among people to stop open defecation and to
adopt safe sanitation practices.”
But numbers tell a different story. Lesser funds are now
being spent on Information, Education and Communication (IEC) activities.
According to Accountability Initiative, construction of
Individual Household Latrines (IHHL) accounted for 97 per cent of the total
expenditure between April 2015 and February 2016. IEC accounted for only 1 per
cent of total expenditure. This is a 3 percentage point drop from FY 2014-15.
Expenditure on IEC reduced from Rs. 175 crore in 2013-14 to
Rs. 109 crore in 2015-16, government conveyed in response to a parliament
question.
Water in toilets
The Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation says that
adequate availability of water for toilets is also a concern. In rural India,
42.5 per cent of households were found to have access to water for use in the
toilet compared to 88 per cent in urban India, Swachhta Status report found.
How many districts and villages have eliminated Open
Defecation?
As of August 2016, only 17 of the 650 districts have been
declared Open Defecation Free (ODF) by the government. Of the six lakh plus
villages in India, 54,732 were declared ODF as of 31st March 2016. These
figures are sourced from responses to parliament questions.
SOURCE THE HINDU
