Events & Issues
New Delhi, 14 November 2011
SC Directive
CLEANING UP SANITATION MESS
By Dhurjati Mukherjee
The
recent directive of the Supreme Court to ensure that all schools in the country
should be provided with permanent toilets by the December-end this year is
undoubtedly a significant judgment, more so because sanitation has emerged a
crucial problem in India and
most developing countries of the Third World, specially in South
Asia.
It is
estimated that around 40-45 per cent of schools in India have no toilets though a
report of the education think tank, National University of Educational Planning
& Administration, revealed that nearly 30 per cent of the 13 lakh Government
schools in the country do not have toilets.
The
dimension of the problem is so acute that communicable diseases have increased
rapidly due to lack of access to sanitation and/or lack of adequate awareness
about the direct and indirect effects of open defecation. Way back in 2003, it
was estimated that in South Asia approximately
653 million people – 76 per cent of the total population still lack access to
adequate sanitation. And the figure for India may be anything between 55 to
60 per cent of the population presently which was much higher earlier.
Sanitation
is broadly defined to include management of human excreta, solid waste and
drainage. The World Health Organization (WHO) defines improved sanitation as a
means that hygienically separates human excreta and hence reduces health risks
to humans. Inadequate sanitation is thus lack of improved facilities – toilets,
conveyance and treatment systems – and hygienic facilities that exposes people
to human excreta and thus to disease-causing fecal-oral pathogens through
different transmission pathways.
According
to a study by the Water & Sanitation Programme – South Asia (WSP-SA) of the
World Bank ‘The Economic Impacts of Inadequate Sanitation in India’, the total
economic impact of inadequate sanitation in the country amounts to Rs 2.44
trillion (US $ 5.8 billion) a year, this being the equivalent of 6.4 per cent
of India’s GDP in 2006. The per person annual impact comes to around Rs 2180.
Economic
impacts of inadequate sanitation were as high as the State incomes of Andhra
Pradesh or Tamil Nadu and were more than Gujarat’s
State income on 2006-07.
As is
quite obvious, the health-related economic impact of inadequate sanitation at
Rs 1.75 trillion (US $ 38.5 billion) amounts to the largest category. Experts feel that diseases such as diarrhea
have conveniently been called ‘water borne’ diseases but many communicable
diseases are overwhelmingly explained by inadequate sanitation i.e. having
fecal origin rather than water that acts as a medium to spread diseases.
After
health, access time – production time lost to access sanitation facilities
(shared or public toilets) or sites for defecation – and drinking water-related
impacts are the other two main losses at Rs 487 billion (US $ 10.7 billion) and
Rs 191 billion (US $ 4.2 billion) respectively.
The World
Bank study pointed out that 79 per cent of the premature mortality-related
economic losses under health impact was due to deaths and diseases in children
below the age of 5 years. Diarrhea in children below 5 years accounted for more
than 47 per cent of the total health-related economic losses impact. The
poorest 20 per cent households living in urban areas bear the highest per
capita economic impact of inadequate sanitation of Rs 1699 – this is 75 per
cent more than the national average per capita economic losses of Rs 961 and 60
per cent more than the urban average (Rs 1037).
Rural
households in the poorest category bear per capita losses of Rs 1000 which is 8
per cent more than the average loss for households on rural areas (Rs 930). The
total losses for rural households in the poorest quintile are enormous (Rs 204
billion) as compared to their counterparts in urban areas (Rs 16 billion).
The Government
initiated the Total Sanitation Programme (TSP) since the mid 80s and formulated
the National Urban Sanitation Policy in 2008. But very little has been achieved
compared to the dimension of the problem. It is a well-known fact and also
aptly emphasized in the WSP-SA study that not only are substantial investments
needed but these can become effective when they result in reducing morbidity
and mortality, mitigating impacts on drinking water, reaching the unserved and
poorer sections of the populations, generating awareness on the need for proper
sanitation etc.
Conventional
approaches in India and South Asia have not achieved the desire results because
of the lack of availability of sanitary latrines in rural and backwards areas
of the country. Moreover, behaviour change is a key ingredient of the
Community-Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) strategy that has been in operation for
the past few years. Though it could help achieve4 better results, it requires
more thrust.
The basic
principles of the CLTS approach in rural areas are: Collective action:
mobilizing the community rather than establishing household contacts; Local
choice: accommodating a variety of technological options and getting people to
access affordable technologies; Setting
up local level institutional frameworks: giving local governments a central
role in gearing up work through sustainable options; directing incentives to the
community and rewarding outcomes rather than subsidizing household toilets; and
Market development: promoting the availability of sanitary materials and
motivating private suppliers and NGOs to respond to the demand at affordable
costs.
Whether
the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) of extending access to improved
sanitation to at least half of the population by 2015 and 100 per cent by 2025
will be achieved remains to be seen. The CLTS in the rural areas and the City
Sanitation Task Force are carrying out their efforts in full swing. The concept
of rewarding totally sanitized blocks has been in operation but it has to be
extended to totally sanitized cities, as has been outlined in the National
Urban Sanitation Policy.
However,
what is most necessary at this juncture is the need for awareness generation
about sanitation and the health effects of open defecation on the community.
The City Sanitation Plans should outline these aspects with the involvements of
all stakeholders.
It is in
this connection that involvement of NGOs and the community-based organizations
in awareness generation, both in rural and semi-urban areas and specially in
schools and colleges, becomes very important as they have a crucial role to
play. Moreover, it has to be ensured that all educational institutions should
have separate sanitary toilets for girls with availability of water. Clearly,
fresh impetus and adequate funds need to be made available at the grass root
level to motivate the community. ---
INFA
(Copyright, India
News and Feature Alliance)
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