Here’s the stinking truth. More than half of the 1.2 billion people in India live without toilets. Nearly 60% of the world’s open defecation occurs in India. They squat on roadsides, in agricultural fields or at railway tracks, and defecate in the open. This, despite the Indian government spending close to Rs 1,250 billion on water and sanitation projects in the last 20 years.
In a world filled with uncertainty and unseen risks, the dream of a cleaner and healthier country is the best way to live a better life. The Swachh Bharat Abhiyan may not be a maiden attempt at cleanliness, but was resuscitated by the Government of India (GOI) in 2015, in keeping with Mahatma Gandhi’s quest for a clean India.
The menace of open defecation, manual scavenging, severe shortage of proper drainage systems in rural and urban areas, and resultant outbreak of epidemics of malaria, dengue and viral diseases like diarrhea, affect a majority of Indians. According to a latest UNICEF (United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund) report, around 595 million people defecate in the open in India, leading to health and environmental issues.
The condition of Indian public toilets is known to everybody. They are in such filthy conditions that people normally don’t care to use it. And whoever uses it in an emergency, may end up with some serious infection or disease. These toilets need to be monitored to be kept clean. ‘Even if we construct toilets, there is no proper sewage mechanism to support it, there is never any running water. The toilets require daily cleaning, but the maintenance never happens’, said a member of a Local Residents Welfare Association (LRWA) in Mumbai.
The sorry state of affairs has been confirmed by the latest baseline survey under the Nirmal Bharat Abhiyan, earlier, Total Sanitation Campaign, under progress across the country. The survey figures collected so far, mention that 54.7 percent households in the country are without toilets. The number is likely to go up sharply, considering that data is still being collected. So far, only a fraction of the total 252,824 gram panchayats in the country have been covered under the survey.
The urban story
The Census 2011 provisional data had revealed a similar grim picture, mentioning that less than 31 per cent of the Indian population has access to sanitation facilities. The figures had caused huge embarrassment to GOI as the Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation had claimed more than 57 percent sanitation coverage.
Many urban residents use toilets wherever sanitation access is available. Most often, these are not connected to underground sewerage networks. It is estimated that 75-80% of water pollution by volume is from domestic sewage. Only 160 out of nearly 8,000 towns have both sewerage systems and a sewage treatment plant.
It is pertinent to note that only 13% of piped sewerage is currently treated. Additionally, treatment capacity is highly uneven, with 40% of India’s total treatment capacity located in just two cities – Delhi and Mumbai. Even when there are sewerage networks, much of the waste fails to reach wastewater treatment plants.
Even a UNICEF report mentioned that the national Indian average of sanitation, hygiene and water safety is a mere 34 per cent. For the urban population it is 58 percent, whereas for the people in the rural areas, it is just 23 percent. The situation is endorsed by the Joint Monitoring Programme report, which establishes the fact that at least 40 percent of the people from poorest background have barely benefited from sanitation facilities meant for them in the last decade.
On failing to keep its promises made in the past, the GOI extended its deadline to achieve the targets. Now under the Nirmal Bharat Abhiyan, the government has kept 2017 as the year to declare the country free from open defecation and for ensuring hundred percent safe disposal of fecal waste.
Concerned by the situation, about 40-odd civil societies working on various issues, have come together on a joint platform to demand that the government ‘keeps its promises’. A pressure group is emerging through the campaign to press the government to look at the marginalised population of the country, which is still not getting any sanitation facilities.
Flush with new ideas
India’s Ministry of Urban Development launched a comprehensive policy on urban sanitation in 2008 called the National Urban Sanitation Policy (NUSP), designed to address the sanitation problem and anticipate the country’s growing needs. Foremost, the NUSP calls attention to urban sanitation by noting that it is distinct from rural sanitation and water supply issues. In this context, the sanitation technology paradigm is under review.
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation stimulated this review with its launch of the Reinvent the Toilet Challenge (RTTC) in 2011, promoting the development of radically new innovations to address the sanitation challenge on a large scale. The RTTC is focused on reinventing the flush toilet, a breakthrough public health invention that has not changed substantially since the first flush toilet patent was issued in 1775.
The RTTC comes at a time of growing awareness within the Indian government of the dire need for sanitation reform. This is crucial because many actors have traditionally devoted insufficient resources to the urban dimensions of the sanitation problem. The NUSP sets out goals to increase awareness of India’s urban sanitation issue.
It calls for all cities to be ‘open-defecation-free’, and promotes comprehensive approaches to sanitation reform. Under the NUSP, the central government is also responsible for providing technical assistance and helping to fund sanitation plans through schemes such as the Jawaharlal Nehru Urban Renewal Mission, which has dedicated funds for urban development.
Other national programming provides alternative funding options for water supply and sanitation projects. For example, the Rajiv Awas Yojana initiative was launched in 2012 to bring urban slums under formal city management, thus improving prospects for urban service provision, although many implementation hurdles require immediate attention.
Sanitation is primarily the responsibility of urban local bodies, according to the Constitution of India. They are the fundamental administrative units in charge of infrastructure and service provision at the municipal level. As of 2014, 29 out of 35 states are engaged in preparing state sanitation plans, and 158 cities are developing city sanitation plans.
However, there is a growing recognition that these plans are highly uneven in their quality, and there is a significant gap in funding and execution of the sub-national plans. Despite these, the NUSP has fallen short of driving investment into municipal-level plans to enable their execution. More guidance and funding are needed to ensure consistency and quality of state and city level sanitation reform.
Options and models
India’s extreme need for urban sanitation, combined with the decentralised nature of current policy developments, makes the country a particularly conducive place to experiment with innovations in sanitation technology and management. External funding sources are also looking to stimulate innovative sanitation solutions with enterprising cities. Although the private sector has not traditionally played an active role in sanitation, the advent of the NUSP and the increased attention from external stakeholders are gradually encouraging the private sector to become more involved.
The World Sanitation Programme (WSP) estimates that the Indian sanitation market will be valued at over US$152 billion (between 2007 and 2020), representing a significant business opportunity for innovators and service providers. This convergence of interests presents India with a unique opportunity to stimulate change, and makes India a particularly good place to pilot the Foundation’s reinvent-the-toilet technology.
A number of new models are worth noting. One example originating in the state of Kerala illustrates that private sector innovation is piloting new solutions. Eram Scientific Solutions is a private sector firm driving a new technological and business model to deliver sanitation in congested public places in India’s mega-cities. Eram’s eToilet is a pay-per-use model now being deployed in four states, with over 430 units installed.
The technological features of the toilet include automatic payment collection, doors, and washing mechanisms; a water tank for onsite water storage; general packet radio service (GPRS)-enabled controls for remote monitoring of the unit through the Web or mobile phones; and a solar panel to generate additional power. The toilet is designed to display advertisements on its outer shell, serving as an additional source of income.
Other developments are also unfolding to spur demand and generate new enterprises to provide sanitation services. The nonprofit organisation ‘Water for People’ is implementing “sanitation as a business” model for household and community toilets, and is investing in building entrepreneurial capacity in the sanitation sector. The programme also aims to strengthen the sanitation supply chain and develop sanitation providers that offer an increased array of choices in technology options.
Similar smaller scale pilots for providing public sanitation are occurring in many parts of India, bringing a community or commercial approach to operation and maintenance, with sales of advertising space, helping to underwrite the toilet facilities. Other programmes are applying stakeholder design consultations to test and enhance features and business models for public toilets, such as the work of the design firm Quicksand in Orissa. RTI International, an RTTC grantee, is looking to field test its standalone toilet in India in 2013.
Compared to a conventional toilet, which is made out of bricks, the Magic Genie EcoTech Toilets is made out of stainless steel, making it more potent, sturdy and also portable. Since it is completely automated, it requires no manpower to clean or maintain it. The toilet has automatic flush systems and has automatic floor cleaning too.
The company behind this innovation is A2Z Group, which started to innovate and find a way to solve India’s sanitation problem. The toilet cleans itself after every use, hence guaranteeing hygiene. It does not require extensive monitoring for maintenance and due to their automatic cleaning system, they are free from infections. Not only does it not require water, but it also does not need any sewer lines or septic tanks.
Conclusion
Globally, inadequate urban sanitation is a significant problem that we can address with innovative programming. India’s sanitation needs are acute and, if left unmet, carry major consequences for the country and its people. Investing in sanitation is highly cost-effective. Although the sanitation challenges in India are particularly complex, several developments in sanitation policy and awareness have recently converged, presenting an opportunity to create large-scale change in the sanitation sector. Moving forward, it will be important to explicitly connect India’s sanitation policies to technological innovations, to close the urban-rural sanitation gap.