Sanitation: New Focus Area

According to Household and Housing Census 2011, half of all Indians do not have a toilet at home, while well over half own a telephone. Reacting to this phenomenon, Union Minister of Rural Development, Drinking Water and Sanitation, Mr Jairam Ramesh remarked dryly: “women want cellphone, not toilets at home”.

His remarks invited widespread criticisms then (The Census data was released in March 2011). He was accused of comparing two different things and drawing an unnecessary conclusion.

Criticisms apart, the fact remains that India is lagging behind in achieving Millennium Development Goal 7.

According to the United Nation’s Millennium Development Goals Report, 2012, nearly 60 per cent of those practicing open defecation live in India. What makes the matter worse is the fact that there are 2.1 million toilets in India which rely on manual scavengers to empty them. The report says that India is unlikely to meet MDG target on sanitation by 2015.

Waking up to this serious problem, the government of India has taken slew of policy measures to eradicate open defecation and improve sanitation condition across India, particularly in rural India, where the problem of open defecation is more prevalent.

Highlights

• Nearly 60 per cent of those practicing open defecation live in India
• India is unlikely to achieve MDG goal on sanitation by 2015
• Sikkim is the first and only Nirmal Rajya in the country
• Total Sanitation Campaign has been rechristened as Nirmal Bharat Abhiyan
• The government has scrapped the distinction of BPL/APL families to achieve the total sanitation target
• The government to partner with Bill Gates Foundation

What Do Different Reports Say About Sanitation Condition In India?

• According to Houselisting and Housing Census 2011, though half of all Indians do not have a toilet at home, well over half own a telephone. Only 46.9 per cent of the total 246.6 million households have toilet facilities. Of the rest, 3.2 per cent use public toilets. And 49.8 per cent ease themselves in the open.
• The census found that while 99.1 per cent of city households have electricity supply, just 78.4 per cent have provision for drinking water on premises. Only 59.3 per cent of the households are connected with a piped sewerage network, whereas 4.2 per cent of the households have no drainage connectivity for waste water.

WHO And UNICEF’s JMPWSS Report

• Going by the present pace of progress, India will achieve the millennium development goals (MDGs) on sanitation (Goal-7) only by 2054. While some States had already achieved the target and some are close to it, other populous States such as Madhya Pradesh and Orissa will reach the target only in the next century, according to WHO and UNICEF’s Joint Monitoring Programme for Water Supply and Sanitation (JMPWSS).
• According to the JMPWSS’ report, which tracks the progress on drinking water and sanitation, 17 States, including Kerala, Haryana, Meghalaya, Himachal Pradesh, Punjab and most Union Territories, had already achieved the MDG target while Assam, Andhra Pradesh and Arunachal Pradesh will achieve it in the next 10 years.
• Karnataka, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu and Chhattisgarh are some States that will meet the MDG target in the coming 25 years, while Madhya Pradesh is expected to achieve the goal in 2105 and Orissa in 2160 unless special strategies are adopted to speed up the progress, JMPWS said.
• The world has pledged to reduce by half the proportion of people without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation by 2015 from 1990 figures. Though India has already achieved impressive results on water supply, with 85 per cent of its people having access to safe drinking water, 51 per cent or 626 million people in the country defecate in the open, accounting for 60 per cent of the world’s total open defecations.
• India has seen an improvement in the sanitation figures from 1990, when 75 per cent people defecated in the open as against 51 per cent in 2010. But this improvement is seen only in the urban settings, where 28 per cent had no access to toilets in 1990 as against 14 per cent in 2010. In the rural areas, 91 per cent had no access to sanitation in 1990 as against 67 per cent in 2010, indicating that it was the rich who had more access to sanitation.

Millennium Development Goals Report, 2012

According to the United Nation’s Millennium Development Goals Report, 2012, nearly 60 per cent of those practicing open defecation live in India. The report says, “The MDG sanitation target is still out of reach”. To meet its MDG goals, India is required to reduce the proportion of households having no access to improved sanitation to 38% by 2015. India may achieve to reduce the proportion of households without any sanitation to about 43% by 2015 missing the target by about 5 percentage points. By 2015, India is likely to reduce the rural proportion of no sanitation to 58.84% (against target of 46.64%) and urban proportion of no sanitation to 11.64% (against target of 12.14%).

Steps Taken By The Government

The Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs on June 7 gave the nod for more than doubling the amount for construction of individual household latrines from the existing Rs 4600 to nearly 10,000 rupees and also scrapped the distinction of BPL/APL families to achieve the total sanitation target in the country in the next 10 years.

The cabinet also decided to rechristen the Total Sanitation Campaign as Nirmal Bharat Abhiyan.

At present out of Rs 3400 allocated for individual toilets, Centre gives Rs 2100, state’s share is Rs 1000 and Rs 300 comes from the beneficiaries, while Rs 1200 is leveraged through MGNREGA works as was approved last year. But now after the Cabinet approval, Centre has to dole out Rs 3200, States have to give Rs 1400 and families have to provide Rs 900, while MGNREGA funds will be to the tune of Rs 4500.

The Planning Commission has also approved Rs 36,000 crore for drinking water and sanitation programmes in the 12th Five Year Plan as opposed to Rs 7,800 crore allocated in the 11th Plan. The Cabinet also made toilet construction mandatory for availing funds for Indira Aawas Yojana (IAY) henceforth, allocation for IAY will also be raised from existing Rs 45,000 to Rs.75,000 by end of July. For the first time solid and liquid waste management has been approved for the villages on the model of towns and cities and Gram Panchayats will get from 7 lakh rupees to 20 lakh rupees for the same depending on the size of the population.

The sanitation campaign also got a big boost from the the Union Budget 2012-13.  The Budget announced an increas of 27 per cent in the allocation for rural drinking water and sanitation. The budget for this year went up to Rs 14,000 crore from Rs 11,000 crore last year. The rural sanitation programme has got a whopping increase of 133 per cent, up from Rs 1500 crore to Rs 3500 crore.

National Award For Sanitation

The government has announced a national award for sanitation and water in the name of Maharashtrian saint Sant Gadge Baba. The award, constituted in the name of the Saint who strove towards service to society through cleanliness, will be for villages, individuals or organisations working in the field of sanitation and drinking water.

Govt Seeks Bill Gates’ Partnership

Keen to find a solution to the problem of open defecation, the Government has requested the Bill Gates Foundation to partner with it in its efforts to create better and low-cost sanitation facilities in the country.

The Union Minister of Rural Development, Sanitation and Drinking Water, Mr Jairam Ramesh, had a meeting with Mr Bill Gates in May 2012. The meeting paved way for Gates Foundation to partner with Indian institutes in the research and development field to help co-develop low-cost sanitation solutions.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation had launched the initiative titled reinventing the toilet last year at Rwanda, Africa to help bring safe, clean sanitation services to millions of poor people in the developing world.

DRDO Bio-Toilets For 1,000 Gram Panchayats

A bio-toilet based on Defence Research and Development Organisation’s (DRDO) Bio-Digester technology was inaugurated by Union Minister of State, Statistics and Programme Implementation, Chemicals and Fertilisers Srikant Jena in the presence of Union Minister of Rural Development, Drinking Water and Sanitation Jairam Ramesh in Dhamra (Bhadrak), Bhubneshwar on 24 June, 2012 at a function organised by DRDO and Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI). Initially six twin Bio-Digester toilets (1 male+1 female) in 90 km stretch of Jhamjhadi- Dhamra are proposed to be setup and gradually in the next phase around 1,000 toilets are proposed to be commissioned in Orissa.

Earlier, DRDO and FICCI had entered into an MoU for Accelerated Technology Assessment and Commercialisation (ATAC) programme that aims at commercialisation of cutting-edge technologies for civilian applications.

The technology has been developed by DRDE, Gwalior and DRL, Tezpur, two constituent laboratories of DRDO. The technology was used to decompose biological waste generated by soldiers deployed in high-altitude regions such as Siachen and Ladakh. Subsequently, the technology has been developed for resolving the problems of un-decomposed human waste in plain areas as well. The innovation degrades and converts the waste into usable water and gasses in an eco-friendly manner. The generated gas can be utilised for energy/ cooking and water for irrigation purposes.

Union Rural Development Ministry will soon sign a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Ministry of Defence for installation of bio-toilets in 1000 gram panchayats across the country. The project will be implemented in coordination with the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) at a cost of Rs 400 crore, which will be provided by the Union Rural Development Ministry. The bio-toilets will ensure health, hygiene and sanitation in these gram panchayats.

Sikkim: The First Nirmal Rajya

Sikkim is the first and only Nirmal Rajya in the country, to have achieved 100% sanitation in 2008. For successfully implementing the programme and achieving 100 per cent physical coverage in rural sanitation, Sikkim was awarded the Nirmal Rajya Award on 8th December 2008.

According to the Union Rural development Ministry, Kerala will be the second state to achieve the total sanitation by November 2012. Himachal Pradesh will be the third state (March 2013), followed by Haryana (March 2015) to achieve open defecation free status..

“India Is Drowning In Its Own Excreta”

Sunita Narain of the Centre for Science and Environment points out: “rapidly modernizing India is drowning in its own excreta” (see her commentary in the 14 Jun 2012 issue of Nature.

In this article, she has underlined the importance of sewage system to manage urban waste. The article has highlighted how incomplete sewage systems in most of the big cities in India contaminate rivers and lakes, causing diseases such as cholera. Around 97 million Indians do not have access to clean drinking water, putting the nation second only to China. Similar problems afflict other developing countries.

The challenge for India is to come up with ways of dealing with excreta that are affordable and sustainable, says she. The first step is to match investment in waste-water systems with that for water supply. Innovative and affordable toilets must be designed and accessible to everyone. Only if all waste is treated can pollution be controlled.

She also commented on faulty methods being adopted by city planners across the Indian cities. According to her, they worry more about supplying water to their citizens than about the waste water generated. Yet the effluent inevitably goes into streams, lakes and rivers, or seeps into the ground to contaminate drinking water. Nitrate levels in groundwater across India exceed 45 milligrams per litre — a sure sign of sewage contamination. Leaked sewage leads to a deadly and costly spiral.

As surface or groundwater gets contaminated, the city must source clean water from farther afield. The cost of pumping water rises — it now accounts for 30–50% of the price of supplying water. The cost of building and maintaining pipelines increases. And if the network is not maintained, water is lost — 30–50 per cent of the water leaks. The nation therefore has less clean water to supply and needs to pay more to get it to the people. It cannot provide these services for everyone, and it chooses the rich. As the water system degrades, the rich move to bottled water. The poor get sick.

She suggests, governments must demand change in how water and waste are managed. They must cut the length of the pipeline, by investing in local water supplies such as lakes and ponds and using water more efficiently. They must invest more in sewage systems, even before they invest in water supply. Water accounts and tariffs must reflect the full cost of supply and of waste collection and treatment.