Promoting Sustainable Sanitation in Rural India through the Global Sanitation Fund

The Global Sanitation Fund (GSF) has selected India as part of the Country Programmes portfolio to implement a US$ 5 million fund aimed at promoting sustainable sanitation in rural India, with special focus in the states of Assam and Jharkhand. The programme seeks to respond to fundamental challenges in the Indian Rural Sanitation Sector, is consistent with the core principles espoused by the Government of India (GoI) and the institutional and funding arrangements prevalent in the Sector, and, aims at influencing long-term, sustainable change. NRMC India Pvt. Ltd has been selected by GSF as the Executing Agency for GSF in India.

The Global Sanitation Fund in India will support community-level interventions aimed to enabling access and effective use of improved sanitation facilities and hygiene promotion at scale in select locations in Assam and Jharkhand. This will be achieved through demand-driven approaches that emphasize high quality awareness creation, demand generation and capacity building efforts and integrate elements of sanitation marketing and effective use of media. These activities will be planned, overseen and monitored by the EA under the guidance of a Programme Coordinating Mechanism (PCM) and implemented by carefully identified NGO Partners and consultants. In parallel, it will:

(a) support institutional strengthening and capacity building at the State, District and Sub-district levels in Assam and Jharkhand to enable them to better respond to communication and capacity development needs, and scale-up successful approaches, State-wide

(b) Realize the potential of partnerships between Civil Society and various Government Departments and the Private sector for promoting and delivering sanitation;

(c) Promote multi-stakeholder coalition engagement and learning on a national canvas, with a special focus on Assam and Jharkhand, through support for research, advocacy and networking efforts and learning events. The latter is expected to ensure and enhance the momentum of discourse on Sector issues, ensure wider attention to successful approaches, facilitate substantive reflection on issues of policy and operational import and influence changes in Sector policy and practice.

The Global Sanitation Fund will support 9,000 villages in 16 districts of the states of Assam and Jharkhand (eight in each state). It is envisage that these villages will be spread across 1,250 Gram Panchayats, and the targeted intervention will be over a period of four years to make them open defecation free (2011 - 2015).

The GSF programme has been designed to ensure close engagement with governments at various levels during the implementation of the programme. Thus the selected Sub-grantees will be required to develop relationships and work closely with the DWSMs, GPs and VWSCs. In addition, Sub-Grantees will be expected to draw on TSC resources for capital incentives and the Revolving Fund where available in their work. Sub-Grantees are an important stakeholder in the implementation and success of this programme. The Sub-Grantees will identify appropriate approaches, develop sustainable projects designs and execute them successfully to achieve the objectives of this programme.

As per the GSF principles, the GSF will not allow the use of its funds to pay for sanitation hardware subsidies. However GSF funds may be used to provide software support to sanitation programmes that have a hardware subsidy component if this has been demonstrated to :

Jharkhand and Assam with a combined population of more than 64 million people accounts for a major portion of population of India. By most health, education and other key indicators, large parts of Assam and Jharkhand are not only among the most backward regions in India but also in the world.

Table 2 Demographic details of Assam and Jharkhand

By current trends these states are projected to fall well behind on most of the MDG targets undermining national performance. Lack of education, poor health and insufficient access to drinking water and sanitation are closely associated with and perpetuated by high levels of poverty. Differences amongst social groups are acute and have been acute and continue to be so. Access to sanitation and public health indicators are far below the national average and reveal large differences in health outcomes across gender, social and economic groupings. While access has increased, service quality has declined, and continued population growth makes it difficult to sustain current access rates. Institutional reform and strengthening is needed, in addition to the change in current focus on technical issues.

The water and sanitation sector in the states are characterised by largely non-responsive government service delivery agencies, weak local government and widespread corruption. A large proportion of the population remain excluded from their water and sanitation rights and entitlements. The poor and marginalised suffer most and it is these groups that the EA and Sub Grantees seek to target.

The Total Sanitation Campaign (TSC) of the Government of India has been in operation for over a decade (1999 to date), and the Nirmal Gram Puraskar, a fiscal incentive programme that rewards local governments (Green Panchayats) that achieve total sanitation, has completed five years (2005 to date). The country has made significant progress in terms of coverage and outcomes. The coverage has increased significantly from 21 per cent in 2001 (Census, 2001) to more than 65 per cent, according to the TSC online monitoring system. The number of Gram Panchayats which have won the Nirmal Gram Puraskar for achieving total sanitation has also increased to more than 22,000 but states of Assam and Jharkhand failed to keep pace with the national progress.

While state of Assam has spent only 20% of the TSC budgets allocated to it in a decade state of Jharkhand have registered a similar low of 28% utilisation. With such low utilisation state of Assam has achieved only 23% Individual Household latrines against the TSC target and the state of Jharkhand has achieved only 32% coverage against the TSC target. Both the states have registered a very poor financial efficiency reflected in terms of money spent to make Panchayat Open defecation free when compared to other states. While Maharashtra has spent a meagre Rs 6 lakhs to make a Panchayat ODF, Assam has spent a whopping 675 lakhs and Jharkhand Rs 97 lakhs to make Panchayat ODF. Similarly against a nation average of 753 Panchayats achieving ODF status in India, Assam reports a meagre 24 Panchayats and Jharkhand 223 Panchayats so far becoming Nirmal Gram Panchayts. Both Assam and Jharkhand need to change gears to catch up with the national declaration to make states ODF by 2012 and need to construct 3551 and 3479 toilets respectively per day against the current pace of 789 and 888 toilets per day.

In this challenging social and political environment, the GSF will aim at demonstrating community led approaches for social development; thereby empowering communities to realise their rights to safe water and adequate sanitation and make claims for improved service delivery on the government.