Igniting change: tackling the sanitation challenge

This is a short article published by Jal Manthan, a think tank on rural water supply and sanitation. The document provides an overview of the successes of participatory and empowering approaches to promoting community sanitation compared with subsidy-based approaches. Focusing on examples in Bangladesh and India, the article looks at facilitating change through PRA tools, building community institutions, and key questions such as what triggers behaviour change? The document looks particularly at approaches adopted by the Village Education Resource Centre (VERC) in Bangladesh. Standard approaches to sanitation focus on latrine-building that is done in an infinite time frame and is financially driven by a subsidy program. In contrast, the VERC model focused on eliminating open defecation in a short-time frame that was demand driven. Some of they key lessons identified in the VERC Bangladesh case study were the empowerment of communities that accompanies the paradigm shift from technocratic and financial patronage to participatory approaches; the absence of a household-level subsidy but instead a focus on collective efforts (such as the subsidy money for each household to be put instead into a collective village development fund); the public good dimensions of what is often considered a private good; the effect of peer pressure and monitoring systems on enhancing sustainability; and that the abundance of local sanitation technologies indicates that there is a significant demand in the area. The following requirements were identified as important requirements for effective implementation of the governmentÆs Total Sanitation Campaign: build the capacity of local governments and support local organisations; design appropriate models/ strategies for implementation; support pilots and demonstration projects; support policy debate at the Sate-level to scale-up the approach; and facilitate regional exchanges.