A mission half done

Neerja Chowdhury
Senior political commentator

The PM is all set to declare an open defecation-free India (urban) today to mark the 150th birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi. He will do this from Sabarmati Ashram, Gujarat, in the presence of 20,000 sarpanches, and world dignitaries.

India has had a sanitation policy since the mid-eighties, and this is not the first time that water, hygiene and sanitation (WASH) have been flagged. The Nirmal Bharat Abhiyan was one of the celebrated programmes of the UPA. (West Bengal is resisting on the grounds that it has its own sanitation programme.)

Two factors distinguish Modi from his predecessors. One, he put the PM’s political capital behind a ‘Swachh Bharat’. He staked his personal prestige on it, thereby unleashing huge energy into what many have described as the biggest behaviour change programme undertaken by the government. And two, is his style, the scale and flair it represents, which was also evident at ‘Howdy, Modi!’ last week. 

The packaging—and the grand projection—of the message is as important as the message itself. Of course, the combination helps to alter perceptions. In newspaper parlance, it is like doing a story which can become a flier on page one or the same story can be relegated to page 10, all depending on the treatment it is given. And yet, the outcome of the story, be it Kashmir or a clean India, will depend on other factors, and often, the devil is in the detail. 

When you travel by train, you still see people defecating on either side of the track, and it seems difficult to accept that India has really become free of open defecation, which is the cause of diarrhoea, disease, child death, and of rampant malnutrition among children. People still go into the fields, whether or not they have a toilet, old or 

newly constructed with government subsidy of Rs 12,000.

Yet, there is little doubt that a large number of toilets have been constructed in the past five years. The government claims the construction of nine crore toilets, and nine out of 10 people using them. The 2021 Census will probably tell us the accurate figure. The global community acknowledged the work done by Modi, when he was recently awarded the Global Goalkeeper Award by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in New York last week.

Experts tell you ‘it is 100% ODF’ if you compare it to the baseline that existed in 2013, and it may have left out areas, like those which were riverine, coastal or waterlogged. The government has undoubtedly cracked the whip and mobilised the bureaucracy to deliver, to stick to timelines, to use innovations, like ‘dashboards’ to constantly upload and monitor information. This time even the Collectors were on board. Besides the creation of the infrastructure, the emphasis was also on ‘behaviour change’. We know, only too well, how ‘toilets’ have been used to store grain or to tie animals, or as additional space for a family.

Though the programme was undertaken in a mission mode, more thought could have been given to the nuts and bolts. There is the widespread problem of keeping toilets clean, which is critical to persuade people to use them. The non-availability of water in many areas is a major hurdle.

But the story goes beyond that. There are entrenched attitudes to tackle. Some young men, for instance, tell you they will become ‘impotent if we use toilets’!

When, for example, the faeces gets converted into manure—being called ‘sona khad’—after a few years in the twin-pit toilets, there is the problem of taking it out for use in the fields, with many looking down at the task. For centuries, we have depended on manual scavenging by certain castes. So, ‘Swachh Bharat’ is about building toilets, washing hands, wearing chappals before defecation, cleaning and covering clogged drains, keeping toilets clean, but we are also looking at overcoming old prejudices against Dalits and overcoming gender biases.

Sometimes, solutions throw up new problems, like the government’s successful scheme of giving subsidised gas cylinders to the poor. Today, many are not in a position to buy the second cylinder, which is costly, and is being ‘kept as the daughter’s dowry’. So also is the case with toilets; there may be a need to improve what has been put in place, so as to make it sustainable.

The government should not shy away from allowing a social audit to address the new problems. Particularly now that it is looking at launching Swachh Bharat Mission-2, a 10-year plan, also dovetailing Jal Shakti into it, for the provision and conservation of water. Perhaps the mission should also be aligned with Poshan Abhiyan meant to combat child malnutrition, for it has a network of foot soldiers in anganwadi workers, which Swachh Bharat lacks. In any case, WASH is inextricably linked to malnutrition.

The government could also increase the number of Swachh Bharat ‘preraks’ deployed in the field. This has been an unusual experiment of engaging graduates from IIMs, IITs, engineers or those from the social work stream, to give a year or two of their time to work at the district level, acting like a bridge between the Collector and the ground, and bringing new innovations and motivation into the system. (In this case, the Tata Trusts funded it, but other business groups can also get into the act.)

At the end of the day, there is always a limit to what officialdom can do in effecting ‘behaviour change’. Babus will come and go. It is ultimately the MPs—and MLAs—who have to be accountable for what goes on in their constituencies. Credible constituency-level data is now available, thanks to recent studies on the subject (the latest one is by a Harvard-led team, though it is based on the National Family Health Survey-4, and therefore may not give the latest picture, only a baseline).

This can help our legislators finally get down to the task of making a difference to the nutrition, health, education, water, sanitation, anaemia levels of women and children—and indeed of everybody—in their constituencies. And be held to account for it.