Why don’t the rural folks construct toilets?

In spite of several schemes promoting construction of toilets, one finds that people are not constructing the household toilets as the policy makers would hope for. Why is it so? Various surveys by monitoring agencies (including ours) suggest some answers.

Lack of finance is one of the main reasons for not constructing toilets. This is true of both BPL and APL (surprisingly) families. This is the most often cited reason.

In many households, people don’t feel any need of having toilet in their premises and so they do not construct the toilet. This is absolute lack of awareness regarding sanitation and hygiene in spite of the several programs targeting awareness generation under execution. This is true for almost 1/3^rd of the population.

There is a feeling in general in the rural segment that government schemes would eventually lead to subsidy. Many people (almost 25%) do not construct because they expect a subsidy announcement sooner or later. This is linked to lack of finance pointed out. These amounts are significant for them and they are willing to postpone in the hope of subsidy.

The state of rural sanitation in the nation

Total Sanitation Campaign (TSC) was launched in April 1999 and at present is being implemented in 567 districts of the country. The Program is “ community led” and “people centred” with increased stress on awareness creation and demand generation from the people for sanitary facilities in households, schools, Anganwadis, Community and for cleaner environment.
The scheme seeks to improve the quality of life in rural areas through accelerated rural sanitation coverage with objectives such as to bring about an improvement in the general quality of life in the rural areas; accelerate sanitation coverage in rural areas; generate felt demand for sanitation facilities through awareness creation and health education; cover schools/ Anganwadis in rural areas with sanitation facilities and promote hygiene education and sanitary habits among students; encourage cost effective and appropriate technologies in sanitation; eliminate open defecation to minimize risk of contamination of drinking water sources and food and convert dry latrines to pour flush latrines, and eliminate manual scavenging practice, wherever in existence in rural areas.

Individual household latrines

The national average availability of individual household latrines (IHHL) as of 2005-06 is 51%. Of this, BPL households with toilet facility account for 31% and APL households 20%. Wide disparities exist across states - ranging from 94% in Tripura followed by 88% in Kerala and 77% in Tamil Nadu to 16.62 % in Bihar and 7.37 % in Dadra & Nagar Haveli.

Availability of toilets in the States/UTs of Mizoram, D & N Haveli, Bihar, Manipur, Meghalaya, Haryana, Arunachal Pradesh, Jharkhand, Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu & Kashmir, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Sikkim and Orissa is less than the national average of 51%

The basic purpose of TSC campaign has been to eradicate the practice of open defecation in the rural areas. The national average for the extent of used toilets is 84%. This ranges between 99.83 % in Meghalaya to 65.86% in Madhya Pradesh and 67.86 % in Rajasthan. National average for APL used toilets is 93.81%, ranging between 100% for Manipur, Meghalaya and Sikkim to 88.13% for Jammu & Kashmir. The national average for BPL used toilets stands at 78.03% with highest 99.78% toilet functionality in Meghalaya followed by 99.6% in Gujarat. The lowest 53.33% of toilet usage in BPL category was found in Madhya Pradesh.

Rural Schools

TSC has made provision for toilet facility and hygiene education in all types of Government Rural Schools i.e. Primary, Upper Primary, Secondary and Higher Secondary schools with emphasis on toilets for girls. It may be noted that primary and upper primary education system in India is one of the largest in the world with over 630,000 primary and upper primary schools with 80 million school going children. This huge network of schools offers a ready-made infrastructure to be mobilized and used as a resource to influence parents and hence the community, on issues related to water and sanitation.

The national average availability of school toilets is 76%. Disparities do exist across states - ranging from 100 % in Pondicherry and 99.26% in Karnataka followed by 98.65 %in Kerala and 96.65% in Punjab to 38.20% in Meghalaya followed by Nagaland (38%) and Assam (33.75%). Availability of school toilets in the States/UTs of Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Bihar, Chattisgarh, D&N Haveli, Himachal Pradesh, J&K, Jharkhand, MP, Manipur, Meghalaya, Nagaland and Orissa is less than the national average of 76%.

Anganwadis

Preschool going children are more vulnerable to diseases and infections as compared to their counterpart who are more than six year of age. Because of defecation in the open place in bare footed condition many children in the age group are found to be suffering from worm infections. It is also one of the reasons for anaemia among children. Anganwadi centers in rural areas and Balwadi centers in urban areas have been opened under ICDS to cater to the health and hygiene needs of the children below six and those of pregnant and nursing mothers. The scheme now covers almost all districts in the country.

A majority of the Anganwadis located in government buildings have toilet facility. Toilets facilities are not fully available in those Anganwadi centres that are located in the private buildings (less than 10 percent Anganwadis in private buildings have toilets facilities).

Community Sanitary Complex

Community Sanitary Complex is an important component of TSC. These complexes can be set up in a place in the village acceptable and accessible to women/men/ landless families. These complexes are to be constructed only when there is lack of space in the village for construction of household toilets and users are prepared to take up its operation and maintenance. The progress of the CSCs in the country has been slow, apart from a few states such as Kerala and Maharashtra.