Two senior representatives of CLTS Foundation Global – Dr. Kamal Kar and Deepak Sanan went on a three-day visit to the state. On 24 February, they visited Rajnandgaon district to see first hand the experience with CLTS in the field. The two senior representatives met local people from three ODF communities in two Blocks, namely Churya and Ambagarh Chauki and had extensive interactions and discussions with them, especially the women members from the Self Help Groups, members of PRIs and others. They also met the concerned district and block officials, elected representatives and members from the civil society. The state of Chhattisgarh has been lately in news for its remarkable decision to underplay subsidy for creation of open defecation free communities. The state now has seen the declaration of 5% ODF Gram Panchayats in the past one year and there is considerable excitement about building on this effort.

Dr. Kamal Kar and Deepak Sanan interacting with the communities during their visit to Chhattisgarh.

On 25th and 26th February, Dr. Kar and Mr. Sanan met the Chhattisgarh’s Mission Director for Swachh Bharat Mission, Dr. M. Geetha. They called on the Additional Chief Secretary (Rural Development) Mr. Raut and commended him on the achievements in the state and offered support from the Foundation to scale up the efforts being made. Other meetings included those with the DG of the Administrative Training Institute, UNICEF Head of Office, Chhattisgarh, UNICEF WASH Officer, National Padmasree Award recipient Ms. Phulbasan Yadav and Nitish Kshirsagar, CLTS champion.

Dr. Kar noted that the state leadership of Chhattisgarh has understood the need for ensuring the enabling environment for scaling up of CLTS to fast track the achievement of ODF. Such enabling environment of stopping upfront hardware sanitation subsidy at the household level is very conducive for enhancing state wide access to sanitation rapidly.

Beaming and confident faces of women.

Local community members came out in large numbers during the visit.

Interaction with the community members.

The visiting team noted the following action plans to set Chhattisgarh as an emerging success in scaling up community-led total sanitation backed by the right enabling environment. These points were discussed with the Chhattisgarh state administration and SBM officials. The visiting team noted that the state is practicing a no subsidy for individual household level policy environment. The SBM team in the state has also been doing numerous rounds of training on CLTS triggering. The results are showing from the experiments already conducted in various districts including Rajnandgaon, Raigad, Dhamtari, Bilaspur, Surguja and even Dantewada.

The state administration is following an institutional structure till the block level to support the capacity building, coordination and monitoring activities of the programme. There is also the presence of a number of trained personnel from amongst both programme officials and natural leaders who can form teams to carry out triggering activities in various districts.

The senior team from CLTS Foundation Global recommended an initial set of actions that can take forward the momentum generated in Chhattisgarh. This would include creation of an institutional structure that needs to reach down to the Gram Panchayat level so that there is an army of committed swachhta senanis (sanitation workers) to really scale up in a short period of time. For this a guidance circular would be useful that discusses how this can be done. The first step is to hold orientation meetings at a cluster level in every block (say for about 20 to 30 GPs) and call all possible functionaries like Anganwadi workers, ASHA workers or primary school teachers or health workres, etc, elected representatives and anyone else who can be involved in sanitation at the ground level. Have a suitable person conduct this meeting and bring about a self selection of people ready to act as GP level coordinators. At a second stage, can consider hiring an NGO for making available such coordinators for every left out GP. For this appropriate guidance on engaging an NGO and payments to be made needs to be issued.

The team observed that there is a vital need of proper training and messages that has to reach the entire institutional structure at regular intervals that emphasize that the focus is not toilets but collective behaviour change and how this can be brought about. A guidance note on this would also be useful. They said: “A guidance note is required to enable districts and blocks to engage triggering teams from other places and pay them a suitable amount for expenses and as honorarium. A proper monitoring system needs to be put in place outlining the steps to reach a verified ODF village / GP and rigorously reviewed and monitored so that timely remedial action is initiated at appropriate levels and performance is suitably recognized. A guidance note is required on this in addition to a state level web based system.”

The team felt that the state needs to send a Letter to the Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation (MDWS), Government of India (the nodal ministry managing the flagship Swachh Bharat Mission scheme) on improving the ability to use funds allocated for Individual Household Level Latrine for other purposes including both community reward and soft activities in districts including engaging NGOs, triggering teams, etc.

The CLTS Foundation Global has offered to partner and associate with Government of Chhattisgarh to really scale up efforts in the coming months and are looking forward to great success from this relationship.

This news has been written with inputs from Deepak Sanan and Dr. Kamal Kar. 

The post Silver Lining: Chhattisgarh paving the way towards an enabling environment appeared first on CLTS Foundation Global.

By Amit Sengupta

New Delhi: The Union Minister of Drinking Water and Sanitation, Govt. of India, Mr. Chaudhary Birender Singhtaking stock on Swachh Bharat Mission said that SBM is not only about construction of toilets but also about behavior change. He said that India has to learn from Bangladesh while tackling open defecation in the country. The Union Minister said this while speaking at the National Review Meeting of ‘Swachh Bharat Mission’ (Rural Sanitation)at Vigyan Bhawan, New Delhi on 3 February, 2016.

Mr. Chaudhary Birender Singh, Union Minister of Drinking Water and Sanitation, Govt. of India while lauding the efforts by the stakeholders and state governments on Swachh Bharat Mission said: “We have successfully completed more than one year of Swachh Bharat Mission and moved a step further towards achieving universal sanitation coverage and eliminating open defecation in India by 2019. Sanitation has witnessed a spurt and more than 143,00,000 rural households have gained access to satisfactory level of improved sanitation facilities.”

Stating that over 40,000 villages in India have declared themselves as ODF, the minister gave reference to the recently held SACOSAN VI conference at Dhaka, Bangladesh (11-13 January, 2016; CLTS Foundation Global was part of the Govt. of India delegation at SACOSAN VI in Dhaka). The Union Minister said: “Bangladesh has reduced their OD rate to less than 1 percent. They have done this by following the community approach for bringing in behavior change. Let us also, therefore, remind ourselves that Swachh Bharat Mission is a programme of involving communities into changing their behavior, and not merely a programme of toilet construction.”

During the national conference which was attended by 12 State Ministers of Drinking Water and Sanitation, the Union Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation launched a mobile app during the conference called ‘mRWS App’. This android based app is available free for download at Google’s Play Store.

Mr. Ram Kripal Yadav, Minister of State, MDWS said at the conference: “Our ministry is working towards meeting the Prime Minister’s target of not even living a single household without toilet and OD. Some states are doing good work while rest needs to pad up fast. We are working to fulfill the target of reaching out to every single household with drinking water by 2022 (Water for All by 2022).” Talking about Swacch Bharat Mission, the minster said that there are lot of toilets which are lying defunct. It’s a mindset change that has to happen. Our ministry is doing large scale campaigns to increase awareness and bring collective change, he further added.

Earlier in the day, welcoming the delegates and giving a brief outline of the programme schedule, Mr. Nipun Vinayak, Director, Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation, Government of India said in his opening remark: “Sikkim is on its way to become a fully ODF state. Verification is going on in Sikkim. We have also examples of pockets of ODF regions from Rajasthan and West Bengal.”

In his presentation on ‘Status of Rural Sanitation in the States / UTs of India, Mr. Vinayak said: “Some states with high percentage of access to sanitation need not wait till 2019 in becoming a fully ODF state.  We need dramatic improvements in terms of access to sanitation in states like Bihar, Jammu & Kashmir to come out of the vicious circle of falling back to the trap of OD states.”

The director reiterated in his speech: “We have to keep the ‘toilet’ out of consideration while evaluation of an ODF village. There is ample flexibility given to the States and UTs. The state governments need to introspect if their respective district administration needs adequate flexibility while implementation of the Swacch Bharat Mission programme. There has to be a balance on the need to be restrictive and applying innovation.”

“ODF is a sustainable index. State has to take their own decision. We have to emphasise on community approaches especially for North Indian states which is not doing too good in terms of access to sanitation coverage,” he further added.

Talking about the upcoming World Bank’s 1.5 Billion USD project, the director mentioned: “The World Bank’s proposal has been sent to the Cabinet for their approval. The project will roll out this year. The entire money that would be allocated to the states/UTs will be on the basis of incentives, that would be based on certain parameters. These parameters would be specifically – 1) Reduction of Open Defecation at household level 2) How many of your population is ODF as a collective effort.” These parameters would consist the Index for the Baseline, he said. These will be verified by an annual third party sample survey. He further added that if the state / UT administration needs capacity building they can approach UNICEF which has a customized training module for officials.

Dr. Geetha, Mission Director, SBM, Govt. of Chhattisgarh in her presentation stated that they are implementing the mission with CLTS approach.  They are expected to facilitate their 10971 gram panchayats towards ODF. “ODF Status is an enabling factor for development. 936 villages are verified as ODF in our state. However, the status of about 10 lakhs dysfunctional toilets is a huge challenge. We are thinking of the concept of sustainable toilets and ODF Festival,” Dr. Geetha said.

 In the next few hours in the day long conference, states of Sikkim, Madhya Pradesh (Harda and Indore Districts), West Bengal (Nadia), Tamil Nadu (Madurai), Rajasthan (Districts of Jalore and Bikaner), Jharkhand (Hazaribagh), Punjab, Manipur and Karnataka presented their status and progress on ‘coverage of rural sanitation’. While Sikkim mentioned that they have fulfilled the target of construction of toilets, currently they are witnessing verification of OD. They are focusing on behaviourial change, garbage and solid waste management. They need funds for IEC campaigns, the official said.

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