WASH facilities evade tribals 

Access to improved water and sanitation continues to be a challenge with 26 percent of the world’s population (2 billion) not having access to safe drinking water services, and an estimated 46 percent (3.6 billion) lacking access to safely managed sanitation (UN-Water, 2023). Poor water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) practices can increase the susceptibility of populations to deadly diseases and deaths and cause major economic losses. 

In 2015, India included 90 percent of the South Asian and 50 percent of the global population who defecated out in the open. The Government of India launched the Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM), Jal Jeevan Mission (JJM), and WASH in schools in response to the situation.

The SBM, and particularly sub-mission SBM (Grammen) has helped 100 million rural households and 500 million residents in gaining access to toilets across 630,000 villages and reports indicate that 95 percent households have access to toilet and use them. Phase-II of the SBM focuses on sustaining the gains made by providing access to toilet facilities to the newly emerging eligible rural households and solid and liquid waste management in the villages of the country in forthcoming years (2020–2025). 

The other initiative JJM, which subsumed the National Rural Drinking Water Program by its launch in 2019, is ensuring potable water in adequate quantity, of prescribed quality, with adequate pressure, on a regular and long-term basis to all rural households and public institutions. Under this mission, till March 2022, 102.3 million rural households (54%) have received the benefit of having tap water connections. 

However, is this access even among all populations? What is the state of tribal populations in the context of WASH indicators and access to WASH facilities? A recent study published in the Journal of Water, sanitation & Hygiene for Development explores the spatial heterogeneity in the access of tribal populations to improved water and sanitation facilities and its correlates at the district level in India. The study uses data from the fifth round of the National Family Health Survey (NFHS-5), 2019–21.

Tribals in India, vulnerable and isolated

Around 90 percent of the tribal population in India lives in rural areas, and a large proportion of Scheduled Tribes (STs) live in forests and depend on forest produce, are hunter–gatherers, shifting cultivators,  pastoralists, nomadic herders, and artisans. They are the most vulnerable due to geographical isolation and a number of sociocultural and political factors that makes them lag behind in terms of socioeconomic status, limits their access to resources and benefits derived from developmental programmes.

The study finds that:

• Only about half of ST households have access to improved water and sanitation facilities in India. There is considerable heterogeneity across districts, with only one-fourth of tribal households in 25 districts out of 707 districts, i.e. less than 25 percent of tribal households having improved water and sanitation facilities, and these districts are mainly located in pockets of Bihar, Jharkhand, Odisha, and Tamil Nadu.

• One hundred seventy-six districts have improved water and sanitation facilities between 25 and 50 percent. These districts are located in the states of Jharkhand, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh, Odisha, Telangana, Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir, Ladakh, and some pockets of West Bengal, Assam, Gujarat, and Karnataka. 
• Higher proportion of improved water and sanitation (between 75 -100 percent) facilities are found in the districts of Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Punjab, Haryana, Delhi, Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Mizoram, Sikkim, and some pockets of West Bengal, Assam, Gujarat, Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, and Uttar Pradesh.
• Among the surveyed tribal households, 6.29 percent have unimproved, 43.53 percent partially improved, and the rest have improved water and sanitation facilities. More than half of the households with improved water and sanitation facilities are headed by literate persons (56.29 percent) and those aged 25 and above (50.53 percent). 
• More urban households have improved water and sanitation facilities (72.83 percent) compared to rural areas (46.44 percent). Christian households (64.43 percent) and households in the north-east have the highest percentage of improved water and sanitation facilities (66.40 percent).
• A higher percentage of rich households have access to improved water and sanitation facilities (83.05 percent) compared to poor (38.12 percent) and middle-income households (63.90 percent)..
• Spatial cluster maps of improved water and sanitation facilities among tribal households in the districts of India show that 130 districts from Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, Punjab, Haryana, Delhi, Sikkim, Arunachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Mizoram, and some portion of Karnataka form high cluster hot spots. In comparison, 131 districts from tribal-dominated highland and plateau areas of middle, eastern, and east coastal areas of Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Bihar, Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh, Odisha, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, and some portion of Tamil Nadu and Karnataka form the cold spots. 

• Areas with more rural, poor, kaccha, illiterate, and Hindu tribal households have decreased access to improved water and sanitation facilities.
• Improved sanitation facilities are more in tribal households headed by females highlighting women’s crucial role in ensuring safe sanitation facilities’ availability. Rural areas are more deficient in water supply and sanitation, while, in urban areas, small and medium towns are more deficient than cities.
• The north-eastern region has better access to improved water and sanitation facilities than other regions. This could be due to higher literacy levels among the tribes of that region. Some tribal communities in the north-eastern region such as the Khasi, Jaintia and Garo tribes practice matriarchy where women can decide  resource allocations and exchanges, which could explain the prevalence of high accessibility of water and sanitation facilities in that region.
• Extended families and households over 25 years old have improved water and sanitation facilities perhaps because of availability of collective resources and support networks that  enable them to prioritise and invest in improved infrastructure and hygiene facilities.
• Households with middle-aged and older-aged adults are  more likely to have access to better sanitation facilities than houses with young adults. 

The findings underscore the urgent need for targeted interventions, infrastructure development, and policy interventions to enhance access to improved water and sanitation among tribal households in India.