Urban Sanitation

Menstruation is probably one of the least talked about and ill-understood biological concepts. Despite being a natural physiological function of the female human body, similar to urination or defecation, the menstruation discourse is often shrouded by reticence.

The theme for the 2016 South Asian Conference on Sanitation is 'Better sanitation, better life'

The mere presence of toilets does very little to change sanitation behaviour in the absence of community ownership and participation. A decade ago, this was more or less the story of Tiruchirapalli, one of the least hygienic cities in the country then.

The responsibility of implementing the Swachh Bharat Mission is shared between the Ministries of Urban Development and Drinking Water and Sanitation. While the Ministry of Urban Development (MoUD) is responsible for sanitation in urban areas, the Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation (MDWS) is in charge of the same in rural India.

On-site sanitation systems are options which help treat the waste at source, rather than dealing with it several miles away in a centralized manner. In the absence of sewerage systems and piped supplies, communities have to devise decentralized ways to deal with their shit. Some of the most common on-site sanitation systems include septic tanks and pit latrines.

India’s status as the world leader in poor sanitation is deplorable. It may come as a surprise to many that African countries like Rwanda and Malawi have dealt with the issue of open defecation in a better manner compared to India. 70% of rural Indians, that is around 550 million people answer nature’s call out in the open.

The launch of the Swachh Bharat Mission in October 2014, aimed at changing the sanitation landscape of the country was welcomed both with delight as well as skepticism. The idea was to make India open defecation free by 2019.

Author: Madhu Thakar

Open defecation cannot be eliminated just by providing a hole in the ground with an oversized umbrella over it and christening it a ‘toilet’. There appears to be an unseemly hurry in building toilets all over the country without understanding the theory behind them.

Author: Radhika Viswanathan

Arghyam, a grant making foundation working in water and sanitation in India, hosted a workshop on 27^th January 2015 at the Indian Institute of Human Settlements (IIHS), Bangalore to understand the interface between groundwater and sanitation in India.