Water supply and sanitation were added to the national agenda during the first five-year planning period (1951-1956), and increasing investments have been made in subsequent plans. National policy guiding India’s approach to water supply and sanitation in the Eighth, Ninth and now the Tenth Plan broadly follow the guiding principles of the New Delhi declaration, adopted by the United Nations General Assembly in December 1990. In line with the 73rd Constitutional Amendment and increasing recognition that centralised, government controlled, and supply
driven approaches need to be changed to more decentralised, people centric and
demand responsive approaches has led to the revamping of the ARWSP (Accelerated
Rural Water Supply Programme), and the inception of the Sector Reforms
programme. This major paradigm shift in thinking and policy, launched in 1999, incorporates the principles of
(a) adoption of demand responsive approaches based on empowerment, to ensure
full participation in decision making,
The RCRSP (Restructured Central Rural
Sanitation) that came into being from 1st April 1999 advocates shift from
a high subsidy to a low subsidy regime, agreater household involvement and
demand responsiveness, provides for the promotion of a range of toilet options to promote increased affordability, has
strong emphasis on IEC and social marketing, provides for stronger back up
systems such as trained masons and building materials through rural sanitary
marts and production centres and includes a thrust on school sanitation as an
entry point for encouraging wider acceptance of sanitation by rural masses. control, and management by communities, (b) shifting the role of governments from direct service delivery to that of planning, policy formulation, monitoring and evaluation, and partial financial support, and (c) partial capital cost sharing, in either cash or kind or both, anto 75 soon. Centrally sponsored low cost sanitation schemes continue to remain a key component of urban sanitation in the Tenth Plan and will continue to be propagated as not just a programme for urban poor or slum populations, but also an appropriate intervention wherever the costly option of underground drainage is not feasible. A new scheme for community pay-and-use toilet complexes, and the VAMBY –(Valmiki Ambedkar Awas Yojana) housing for slum development with 20 per cent fund component for sanitation – is also proposed. The national policy guiding the water and sanitation sector in India today is contained in the Eighth Five-Year Plan 1992-97) High priority was given to The primary responsibility for providing drinking water and sanitation facilities in the country rests with the State Governments, and, more specifically, the local bodies in the urban areas. The Centre provides allocates funds and also ensures that funds are provided in State budgets, and progressively larger allocations have been made for water supply and sanitation in the various Five Year Plans India Assessment 2002-Water supply and sanitation - Planning Commission, Government of India, [ C.eldoc1/d70d/wtr-supply-sani-2002.pdf] . Central Rural Sanitation Programme (CRSP) was launched in 1986 primarily with the objective of improving the quality of life of the rural people and also to provide privacy and dignity to women. CRSP was restructured in 1999 and a demand responsive community led Total Sanitation Campaign was launched . TSC emphasizes more on Information, Education and Communication (IEC), Human Resource Development, Capacity Development activities to increase awareness among the rural people and generation of demand for sanitary facilities. This will also enhance people’s capacity to choose appropriate options through alternate delivery mechanisms as per their economic condition. Guidelines on Central Rural Sanitation Programme Total Sanitation Campaign [ C.eldoc1/d70d/NewTSCGuideline.doc]
The Government of India has set targets in the 10th Five Year Plan that are in
fact more ambitious than the MDGs: • Coverage of all rural habitations with potable water by 2007, with specific attention to tackling water quality problems; and • Increasing rural sanitation coverage to 50 per cent by 2007 and 100 per cent by 2010. Improved access to safe water and basic sanitation has the potential to significantly improve livelihood opportunities for poor people. Its main benefits will be through reduced time and drudgery involved in fetching water – a burden that falls disproportionately on women and children – and reduced illness. All For That Precious Drop, Britain Today, November 2003 (need to downoad, D70d) The recently concluded World Summit for Sustainable Development held at Johannesburg and the earlier Millennium Declaration of the United Nations have both laid stress on the global goal of halving by 2015 A.D. the population without access to water supply and sanitation. In India, due to committed and concerted action by the State Governments and the Government of India, considerable success has been achieved in providing safe drinking water to rural and urban populations. Sanitation coverage in urban areas has been improving while in rural areas, a lot is still to be done. At the same time, the issue of sustainability and maintenance of the quality of water supplied is an area of concern. The entire water supply and sanitation programme has hitherto been operated as Government-managed, without the active participation of the beneficiaries. It is estimated that by 2025, more than fifty per cent of the country’s population will live in cities and towns and thus the likely demand for infrastructural facilities is expected to rise sharply posing a challenge to urban planners and policy makers. It is unlikely that, in the future, Government alone would be in a position to mobilise all the projected demand of funds by the sector, especially in view of resource constraint and competing demands on even the available resources. In this context, Government of India has taken significant steps to introduce reforms initiatives in the water supply and sanitation sectors aimed at better involvement of the users, both in cost sharing as also in operation and maintenance. India Assessment 2002-Water supply and sanitation - Planning Commission, Government of India, [C.eldoc1/d70d/wtr-supply-sani-2002.pdf] Some Case studies Following are the various case studies of sanitation system with government programmes and schemes with achievents and challenges. Villagers in the Satara and neighbouring Pune districts have worked with their Panchayati Raj Institution (PRI) representatives to clean up their villages. This means total sanitation - toilets in each house so people do not use fields for defecation. Also garbage segregation, vermicomposting of organic waste, sanitary landfills for inorganic waste, drains to channel water, waste water treatment and reuse, wind turbines for power, biogas for cooking, and regular cleaning of the village. Dhamner village headman Shahji Kshirsagar says, "The habit of total sanitation has become so ingrained here that we in the Panchayat do not need to do anything now. The villagers keep their village completely clean. They have even got over the mental block of using human waste-generated biogas for cooking." Rural upliftment through total sanitation by Nitya Jacob GRASSROOTS, 01 DEC 2006 http://www.pressinstitute.org/scripts/grassroots_english.asp Till this year, 4,959 villages had bagged Nirmal Gram Puraskar (NGP), a clean village prize, for having flush toilets in every household and school.Ranging from Rs 2,00,000 for the smallest village to Rs 50,00,000 for the biggest district, the award has given a fillip to the subsidy-driven toilet construction programme as villages compete to gain recognition.The flip side of this development is that despite millions of toilets having been built, over 500 million rural people still defecate in the open every day. Reports indicate that a significant number of people in the awarded villages are reverting to the age-old habit. Ladies & gents -Sudhirendar Sharma [C.eldoc1/d70d/26jul07toi1.pdf] Good Sanitation will get govt award - Paromita Shastri [C.eldoc1/d70d/10jul07mnt1.pdf] Overcoming the seven-year itch - Swapna Majumdar [C.eldoc1/d70d/01jun07grd4.html] Sanitary complexes remain unused - K. Manikandan [C.eldoc1/d70d/04jan08h1.html] Low cost toilets help Bengal total sanitation - Nitya Jacob [C.eldoc1/d70d/01dec06grd1.html] TSC itself was launched four years earlier in 572 districts and gives a subsidy of Rsl,500-2,000 to build a toilet. Till April 2007, NGP was awarded to 4,959 villages and another 500 are in the queue. Good Sanitation will get govt award [C.eldoc1/d70d/10jul07mnt1.pdf] The Soozhal Initiative: a model for achieving total sanitation in low-income rural areas - S Ramesh Sakthivel, and Roger Fitzgerald This case study documents the Soozhal Network’s rural sanitation initiative in the Soozhal, a group of seven NGOs, launched its project to complement one of the Government of India’s Total Sanitation Campaigns (TSCs), which involved non-governmental stakeholders. [C.eldoc1/d70d/soozhal-initiative.pdf] Where open defecation is a closed matter - Newindpress Online, [ C.eldoc1/sanitation/sanitation-article.html]
Water, Environment and Sanitation -India - UNICEF
( recently it has ben added. could use some
data for policy) [C.eldoc1/d70d/statistics-Unicef.pdf]
Handbook on Community Sanitation Systems Towards Total Sanitation & Hygiene: Challenge for India. Plocy reforms and TSC in different parts of India Efforts, Results and some hiccups
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