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Rural Sanitation in India
NC Saxena
Background
Government of India (GOI) started way back in the 1970s many social sector programmes in poverty alleviation, drinking water, health, nutrition etc; however upto 1986 there was no such central sector programme for sanitation. The 1981 Census revealed that rural sanitation coverage was a meagre 1%, and open defecation was the norm even for well-to-do families. For the first time in 1986 a new Central Rural Sanitation Programme (CRSP) was introduced by Government of India for construction of household toilets in rural areas with huge subsidy element, which was in 1998 Rs 3,000 per toilet available to all. This resulted in construction of a large number of toilets mostly by contractors and hence of poor quality, but these were hardly used for want of felt need, and gradually became dysfunctional.
As Secretary Rural Development in Government of India when I started the Total Sanitation Campaign (TSC) in 1999, I totally abolished subsidy for non-BPL population and reduced it for the BPL from Rs 3000 to only Rs 500, but vastly increased funds for communication and extension. This “demand driven” approach emphasized more on Information, Education and Communication (IEC) activities to increase awareness among the rural people and generation of demand for using toilets.
However the states did not like reduction in subsidy, and even funds for IEC were not effectively utilised. Often these were given to some NGO who would publish publicity material that remained undistributed and was mostly confined to some junk room. Gradually under pressure from the states the amount of subsidy kept on increasing and it became Rs 10,000 per toilet in 2012, when the scheme was renamed as Nirmal Bharat Abhiyan (NBA). States argue that not even 10% of the toilets constructed during the low subsidy regime are in existence now as there was no superstructure and only a single pit was constructed. According to them sustainability of the low cost toilets constructed was a major issue and therefore they are in favour of higher subsidy to construct more durable IHLs.
States seem to have convinced the new Government on the importance of subsidy that has further been increased to Rs 12,000 in December 2014. Heavy reliance on subsidy has been criticised by many, who argue that it delays community participation. However, it seems irreversible now.
Should subsidy be discontinued?
Field studies show that the reasons for not using toilets are rooted in poor construction, or technological norms not being followed, and not only lack of awareness as is the common impression. If the toilet is functional, of good quality, with sufficient water, chances of its being used (at least by women, children, old & sick, and during the rains) are quite high. Admittedly felt need for toilets is not as strong as for water or schools, but people seem keen to construct toilets perhaps because of the lure of subsidy. Its usage in some cases may remain partial and seasonal, but what needs to be observed is whether the partial use gets converted into full use in course of time, or remains partial even after a year or two.
There is a widely held view among academics that government subsidy disrupts usage of toilets. They argue that people are still used to the age-old cultural practice of open defecation, and therefore government needs to concentrate on making IEC more effective in order to achieve behavioural change. Since sanitation is a public good and subject to externalities, the effort should be to mobilise the entire community, and the incentive payment should be made only after the entire village has become open defecation free (ODF) and not before. It is also suggested that incentive payment should preferably be made as a lump-sum to the panchayat after the community is ODF, which would then prioritise how to spend the funds. Less preferable would be payments directly to households but only after the community has been declared ODF.
There are several practical problems in accepting the above radical suggestion. Firstly, though IEC should certainly be made more effective and should continue in such villages/blocks where toilet usage is, say, less than 30% of the total households, it is elitist and patronising to think that people are irrational and their behaviour can be changed with good publicity. In villages where the well-off (and even some poor) have constructed and are using the toilets, others can certainly watch them and weigh the benefits vs costs. If they are not constructing the toilets with their own funds, it is primarily because their world-view is narrow, budgets are tight and they cannot spare ten to fifteen thousand rupees in one go when confronted with many other pressing demands.
Second, health benefits to individuals from using a toilet accrue only when everyone in the village does so. This in a way becomes a typical ‘tragedy of the commons’ issue, and needs strong communities to monitor each others’ actions. The chances of community based approach are higher in smaller panchayats. Where the population of the village exceeds 200 families it becomes difficult to convince everyone, hence community leadership does not emerge in such cases. Some outstanding community leaders such as Bharat Patil in Kolhapur have certainly mobilised the community, but such leaders are rare and cannot be expected to cover the entire country. Cooperation works best in small groups with similarity of needs and clear boundaries, and shared norms and patterns of reciprocity. Local collective action has been undermined in the last thirty years by a number of political and economic processes. Village societies have become heterogeneous, and market forces have commercialised the erstwhile subsistence economies integrating them with urban and national economies. Possibilities for migration and mobility tend to work against community action.
Third, Government’s own capacity to do hand-holding and achieve behavioural change is limited by several factors, such as hierarchical culture, non-residence of village staff in the village, and corruption.
Fourth, panchayats too (with some exceptions) cannot mobilise the community on a large scale. The number of villages per panchayat is often more than five in states like Odisha, West Bengal, Assam, Andhra, etc. Panchayat leaders like schemes which bring them commissions, such as NREGA and IAY. They take no interest in maintaining village assets, such as handpumps, village roads and commons.
Lastly and most importantly, many empirical studies question the assumption that cultural barrier is the main factor for not using a functional toilet. A recent study (Hindu 9 June 2014) showed that of the persons defecating in the open, 86 per cent did not have toilets. Same conclusion was drawn in the evaluation done by the Planning Commission in 2013, which found that out of the 73 households per 100 households that practice open defecation, 66 households are forced to do so due to unavailability of individual household or community toilets, and 7 household do so in spite of having toilets.The study also noted that most households toilets in West Bengal have been covered with cheaply available materials which are often not to their satisfaction. Hence there is the need for construction of complete toilets, instead of simply installing toilet pits.
The increase in subsidy is from 500 in 2002 to 12,000 in Dec 2014, and is available to about 85% of the households as against being restricted to only about 35% who were below poverty line in 1999. The low subsidy regime had justification in 1999 because at that time even the well-off in a village did not own a toilet, and therefore the focus was rightly on IEC. Now awareness is not a major issue, as people could watch other villagers in their village benefitting from the convenience of having a private toilet. The bottom fifty percent in a village would not become part of the programme unless the construction is highly subsidized. If there are a few villages where even the poor have constructed toilets without subsidy, these have to be treated as exceptions; its replication on a large would be difficult.
Convergence with NREGA
My own field work shows that quality of construction (arising out of the fact that the house owner does not control expenditure) is a larger bottleneck than lack of awareness. The households’ control over funds has further been diluted in April 2012, when government decided to make subsidy available from two different budget heads, NBA and NREGA. However it is almost impossible at the village level to converge and get funds from the two schemes quickly, and this was the biggest dampener for the programme in the last two years. Before convergence, the implementation of NREGA and NBA were undertaken by different departments who had their own systems of fund flow and work flow. Sanitation and NREGA guidelines are conceptually different from each other, as sanitation guidelines give money only as incentive, whereas NREGA gives money for construction. Moreover toilet construction is not a labour intensive activity, as total labour cost in toilet construction is less than 30%.
Another challenge to convergence is the huge paperwork that de-motivates the implementing stakeholders. The net result is that the subsidy amount and therefore construction of toilet is not controlled by the house owner. It is done by someone else in the village who purchases pan, pipes, and pays to the labour. Since a part of subsidy ends up in paying bribes, quality of construction, especially what is underground remains poor, and soon the toilet falls into disuse. How to ensure that the entire subsidy is passed on to the house owner and he alone takes all financial decisions with full sense of ownership and with the intention of using the toilet is the biggest challenge in the programme.
Wherever good results are achieved, it is because some district Collector/CEO or BDO assumes leadership, takes risks and decides to flout or ignore rules and procedures. For instance, the subsidy amount from NBA funds is to be given as incentive for using the toilet, and after its construction. However, in practice it is often advanced by the block to the beneficiary, if the gram sewak is convinced about the genuine efforts of the beneficiary. Similarly, the NREGA guidelines lay down that each toilet is to be treated as a separate project (which is time consuming), but it is often not observed. Sometimes the supplier of material would supply these in advance, hoping that the gram sewak or rozgar sahayak would be able to arrange for funds soon. Thus personal interest by the government servant and the panchayat becomes an important factor in the success of the programme.
The new Swachh Bharat Mission
Recently Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM) has been launched by the Prime Minister on 2nd Oct, 2014 with the declared goal of making India Open Defecation Free (ODF) India by 2019, by providing access to toilet facilities to all. It is significant to note that the new government in its latest circular dated 18th December, 2014 permitted the entire Incentive money of Rs 12,000 per toilet chargeable on the Mission from the sanitation sectors, thereby putting an end to the necessity of drawing money from two different heads. States will have flexibility to decide whether to give the subsidy to the individual household or to the community or as a combination of both. Ideally the construction activities should be taken up by the individual beneficiaries themselves with support from/or through agencies in the village. States may decide to provide incentives to households in two phases, one at the pre-construction stage and the other on completion of construction and usage. However, the community incentive, if any, can only be released after the village unit is open defecation free for a significant length of time.
Thus the new Guidelines allow for a great deal of flexibility and states have been empowered to decide how they wish to spend the funds. States could even give subsidy higher than Rs 12,000 per toilet, but the additional money must come from state and not central resources.
Thus NREGA is out of the sanitation sector, and NBA-NREGA convergence, which was the main bottleneck, has become a non-issue.
Central share & role of the States
Central Share of this Incentive for a toilet shall be Rs9,000 (75%) from SBM. The State share will be Rs3,000 (25%). For North Eastern and Special category States, the Central share will be Rs 10,800 and the State share Rs1,200 (90%:10%). The Beneficiary is to be encouraged to additionally contribute in the construction of his toilet to promote ownership. Out of the national allocation under SBM 8% is to be utilised on IEC activities. 3% is to be utilized at the Central level on a national pan India campaign. This shall highlight national priorities on sanitation hygiene and cleanliness.
Who is eligible for subsidy? - In TSC, subsidy was available only to the BPL which was a well defined category. The UPA governmentlater added in 2012 all SCs, STs, small & marginal farmers, NREGA workers, landless labourers with homestead, physically handicapped, and ‘woman-headed household’ in the eligibility criteria. These categories have been repeated in the SBM circular too.
Some of these categories are not well defined, and leave a lot to adhoc decisions. One BDO in Pune told me that he is able to provide subsidy even to prosperous farmers by declaring one of the adult woman as head of the family, and provide subsidy to them as ‘woman-headed household’. Or if land is in the name of a prosperous farmer, his son may not have any land in his name, and thus he gets entitled as landless. By making the entitlement universal the BDO has been able to generate a lot of demand from the rich people. However, such discretion can be misused and may lead to corruption. It also leads to confusion and delays, as in one block the eligibility criteria may be liberally interpreted, whereas the neighbouring block may take a more restrictive view. When I discussed this issue with the Joint Secretary in December 2014, he said GOI would not like to issue any clarification on this issue, and he would not mind if even the non-poor get subsidy as it would lead to more number of toilets.