Skip to main content

Catalyzing market-based solution to fulfill UN sanitation goal


By Moin Qazi*
Sanitation is the key to proper hygiene and is extremely essential for a healthy population. Till a few years back, India’s record on basic sanitation was horrific. The 2011 Census found that more Indians have access to mobile phones than to toilets. It must be said to the credit of the Modi Government that after coming to power, it got down to addressing the most fundamental problems of the people like sanitation and e-financial inclusion instead of launching grandiose but abstract programmes.
Singapore was born as an independent state in 1965 but inherited vast poverty. Freedom meant little promise of a decent life. Lee Kuna Yew, the country’s founding father and the first Prime Minister, found that Indonesia’s public health system was in a pathetic state and there were frequent outbreaks of typhoid, cholera and other life-threatening diseases. Lee knew a sick nation couldn’t be productive but Singapore didn’t have the time or resource to build a robust health system for handling the huge disease burden. Renowned for his visionary acumen, Lee realised the power of hygiene and sanitation in health and focused on the well-being of citizens very early. He invested in healthcare and showed the world the huge dividends of this basic intervention.
Toilets are the world’s cheapest preventive medicine. In a poll by the British Medical Journal, sanitation was voted the greatest medical milestone of the last 150 years—higher than antibiotics, vaccines and anesthesia. It is the best way to improve immunity against health hazards. Lacking access to a toilet involves more than just embarrassment and inconvenience. It’s also a significant health hazard. The risks associated with open defecation are not just from the disease but we must also take into account the humiliation and shame undergone by those who squatter in a gutter or bush. Because India’s population is huge and densely settled, it is impossible to keep human faeces from wells, farming land and children’s hands.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi took Lee Kuna Yew’s path, as he knew it was the least travelled and launched Swachh Bharat Abhiyan or Clean India Mission to modernise sanitation within five years by setting a target of building 110 million toilets, the largest toilet building programme in the history of mankind. Since Lee’s revolutionary experiment, decent, non-sewered, affordable, on-site water-conserving, toilets have revolutionised sanitation systems. Innovators have improved basic latrine toilets by developing ‘off the grid’ locations with new waterless technology for treating waste to make it cleaner and to biodegrade or compost its content.
Some ‘dry’ models use sawdust for ash to douse the waste. By using dry toilets, not only do you save water, you can actually use the waste for fertilisation purposes. Models are constantly upgraded to make it relevant to time: Toilet pans are now manufactured from attractive plastic and cheaper and more durable accessories are reducing costs and enhancing life. Rural toilets are usually a hole in the ground with two planks. Farmers collect human waste for composting to fertilise crops. Flush toilets deprive them of composting material and septic tanks require extra cost and effort to empty and clean. We now have toilets that require no connections to water, sewer or electrical lines.
At present, toilets that are built are mostly single-pit latrines that need to be emptied at least once every few years. Where the pits are lined at the bottom, the seepage will need to be pumped out more regularly, but there will have to be measures to ensure that it is not disposed of in neighbouring fields or rivers.
Where the pits are not lined, groundwater quality can be affected. In Kerala, most houses have an unlined pit on one side of the house and a well-used for drinking water on the other side, thus posing health hazards. Since groundwater is the source of drinking water for around 80 per cent of the population in India, this aspect needs to be kept in mind. In India, emptying a latrine is a taboo in a way that it isn’t in other places. Instead of adopting an affordable technology, people either defecate in the open or use expensive technology that can be emptied with a vacuum where nobody has to interact with faeces. An important point here is that if people use the twin pit toilet (a system in which two pits are constructed so that when one fills up, it can be covered and allowed to sit for decomposition) in a way the Government and international organisations recommend, there will not be an issue of biological danger from faeces because they’re supposed to decompose in six months and can be emptied.
Lack of sanitation has obvious and glaring health hazards leading to cycles of contamination and infection that impose a heavy cost on human, economic and environmental health. Such societies also tend to have the highest number of child deaths. For instance, women have specific sanitation needs related to menstrual hygiene. Fortunately, Governments around the world are improving sanitation with innovative non-sewered solutions that are more flexible and affordable — often at one-seventh the cost of sewers. Investments in clean sanitation contribute positively to both economic and health outcomes, such as increased worker output, reduction in cases of chronic diarrhoea and children’s improved attendance and performance in schools.
UNICEF undertook a study across 10,000 rural households in 12 cities to estimate the cost benefits of the mission. It found out that every rupee invested in improving sanitation will help save Rs 4.30. The study found that the campaign could lead to each household saving around Rs 50,000 per year. The study concluded that if 85 per cent of household members use their washrooms to defecate, the financial savings induced by improved sanitation had a cost-benefit ratio of 430 per cent on average. In other words, one rupee invested allows a saving of Rs 4.30. According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), every dollar invested in sanitation yields on an average, $5.50 in economic returns.
India could learn from other so-called Third World nations, including our neighbour Bangladesh, which reduced open defecation from 34 per cent in 1990 to just one per cent in 2015 without as much subsidy. As part of a sustained effort, its Government partnered with village councils to educate people on the overall merits of proper sanitation. Instead of just focusing on the hazards of open defecation, the Bangladeshi Government extolled the virtues of clean sanitation — with women playing a vital role in the success of the campaign. A toilet soon became a symbol of equality.
The three-year-old Toilet Board Coalition (TBC), a global consortium of companies, social investors, sanitation experts and non-profits, aims to catalyse market-based solutions to fulfill the UN’s Sustainable Development Goal of achieving adequate and equitable sanitation and hygiene for all and ending open defecation by 2030. With millions of new toilets, more sanitation workers will be needed to carry out faecal sludge management. This will be difficult as such jobs are stigmatised.

Here are the three sub-sectors of the sanitation economy as identified by Toilet Board Coalition (TBC):


The momentum built by the Government is certainly going to propel entrepreneurs to come up with creative solutions to eliminate some of the glitches. The ecosystem is fast taking shape and convergence among various stakeholders and actors should help us see an end to this uncivilised practice of open defecation.
*Development expert

Comments

TRENDING

Defeat of martial law: Has the decisive moment for change come in South Korea?

By Steven Lee  Late at night on December 3, soldiers stormed into South Korea’s National Assembly in armored vehicles and combat helicopters. Assembly staff desperately blocked their assault with fire extinguishers and barricades. South Korea’s President Yoon Suk Yeol had just declared martial law to “ eliminate ‘anti-state’ forces .”

70,000 migrants, sold on Canadian dream, face uncertain future: Canada reinvents the xenophobic wheel

By Saurav Sarkar*  Bikram Singh is running out of time on his post-study work visa in Canada. Singh is one of about 70,000 migrants who were sold on the Canadian dream of eventually making the country their home but now face an uncertain future with their work permits set to expire by December 2024. They came from places like India, China, and the Philippines, and sold their land and belongings in their home countries, took out loans, or made other enormous commitments to get themselves to Canada.

EVMs: Govt must prove beyond reasonable doubt it's upholding mandate for free, fair polls

By Jerald D’souza  With the growth of India’s population, concerns about electoral fraud associated with ballot papers, also began to escalate. In 1989, the People’s Representation Act was amended to enable EVMs to prevent electoral fraud. In 1998, EVMs made their debut during legislative assembly elections and for the first time for general elections in 2004. However, criticisms against the EVMs and questions about their integrity have been raised by political parties, civil society and the general population. On 2 February 2024, there was a noteworthy demonstration of dissent where numerous individuals, including Ambedkarite advocates, legal professionals, and other members of civil society  convened at Delhi’s Jantar Mantar demanding the prohibition of EVMs. In 2024, the Supreme court had slapped down a petition to return to paper ballots on the basis that machines give “absolutely accurate results” unless human bias maligns them. The court stated that it was open to testi...

This Indian British Marxist blamed USSR's collapse in 1991 on Khrushchev's 'revisionism'

By Harsh Thakor*  Harpal Singh Brar, British Indian Marxist scholar and communist leader, has passed away in Chandigarh. He was 85. He was a lifelong supporter of socialism, Marxism, and the working class. He will be remembered among British Communists.

Chalapathi's death in encounter suggests Maoists' inability to establish broader mass support

By Harsh Thakor* The Maoist movement experienced a significant loss during the Ramagudem encounter on January 21, with the death of Chalapathi (Pratap), a Central Committee member of the CPI (Maoist). His death, along with 15 others, marks a major setback for the movement. Reports suggest that his location was revealed to security forces through a selfie with his wife.

A groundbreaking non-violent approach: Maharishi’s invincible defense technology

By MajGen (R) Kulwant Singh, Col (R) SP Bakshi, Col (R) Jitendra Jung Karki, LtCol (R) Gunter Chassé & Dr David Leffler*  In today’s turbulent world, achieving lasting peace and ensuring national security are more urgent than ever. Traditional defense methods focus on advanced weapons, military strategies, and tactics, but a groundbreaking approach offers a new non-violent and holistic solution: Maharishi’s Invincible Defense Technology (IDT). 

Why do we mostly resist and refrain from communicating on sanitation topic?

By Nikhil Kumar, Mansee Bal Bhargava* According to UN SDG Progress report (2022), at the present moment no targets for SDG 6 are expected to be met by 2030. In 2022, 2.2 billion people had no access to safe drinking water and 3.5 million lacked safe sanitation. Approximately 50% of the world’s population was reported to have been under resourced in enough water for part of the year and a quarter of that population was living under “extremely high” water stress. Add to it, droughts have affected over 1.4 billion people between 2002 and 2021.

CCG raises concerns over Indian State of Forest Report 2023 in open letter to environment minister

By A Representative  The Constitutional Conduct Group (CCG), a collective of former civil servants, has expressed serious concerns over the Indian State of Forest Report (ISFR) 2023 in an open letter to the Union Minister for Environment, Forests & Climate Change. The group has criticized the report's delayed release, flawed methodology, and misleading claims regarding the state of India's forests.

Operation Kagar represents Indian state's intensified attempt to extinguish Maoism: Resistance continues

By Harsh Thakor Operation Kagar represents the Indian state's intensified attempt to extinguish Maoism, which claims to embody the struggles and aspirations of Adivasis. Criminalized by the state, the Maoists have been portrayed as a threat, with Operation Kagar deploying strategies that jeopardize their activities. This operation weaves together economic, cultural, and political motives, allegedly with drone attacks on Adivasi homes.

अल्पसंख्यक कार्य मंत्रालय का बजट निराशाजनक: 19.3% अल्पसंख्यकों के लिए मात्र 0.0661% ठोस आवंटन

- मुजाहिद नफ़ीस*   1-2-2025 को भारत सरकार द्वारा संसद में वर्ष 2025-26 का बजट वित्त मंत्री निर्मला सीतारमण जी ने पेश किया| इस वर्ष का बजट 5065345 करोड़ है जो कि पिछले साल के संशोधित अनुमान से लगभग 7.39% की बढ़ोतरी हुई है| वहीं अल्पसंख्यक कार्य मंत्रालय का बजट मात्र 3350.00 करोड़ है जो कि कुल बजट का 0.0661% लगभग है|  पिछले साल 2024-25 में 3183.24 करोड़ था|