Closing Access Loop: Situating Post-infrastructural Assurance …
75
mortality rate of India is 35 deaths per 1000 live births. Diarrhea accounts for one of
the major killers of infants, i.e. 8% (UN Inter-agency Group Report 2017).
In order to seize deterioration in sanitary environment, the Government of India
launched an ambitious sanitation program—Swachh Bharat Mission in October
2014, aiming to end open defecation by 2019. The Campaign, being a national priority, is boasted to have achieved close to full toilet coverage as well as usage in rural
areas. The key findings of recently held National Annual Rural Sanitation Survey
2017–2018, reveal 77% of the households have access to toilets, 93% of those who
had access use the toilets regularly and 96% of the villages Open Defecation Free
(ODF) certified villages have been confirmed ODF (National Annual Rural Sanitation Survey Provisional Report 2018; Joshi 2018). The significance of access to safe
water and sanitation has been underscored since independence. There have been a
number of programs and schemes beginning from National Water Supply and Sanitation program (1954) to the last of the interventions Nirmal Bharat Abhiyaan (2014)
(Alok 2010; Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation 2014), which have focused
on toilet provision and ending open defecation for the last six decades. However,
there have always been a certain proportion of people that inadvertently remained to
practice open defecation in rural regions cutting across all the interventions made so
far.
Another herculean task that remains to be ensured to new Individual House Hold
Latrines is the adequate water supply for allied uses—pour washing the feces or
to perform post defecation cleanliness routines. Although access to drinking water
resources is impressive in India, but it is imperative to locate whether the number
of potable drinking water a household is able to collect is adequate or not. It calls
for increased emphasis on availability of domestic water rather than irrigational or
industrial usage, which deals with the everyday usage of water requirements. Water
provision is allied to and figures as an important determinant in defining better
sanitation practices (Rosenqvist et al. 2016; Sultana 2018; Mohan 2017).
The intervention, therefore, is more likely to provide the population a rudimentary
level of sanitation services, hurried to label full coverage of toilets as a resolution to
obliterate open defecation as problem. Rural communities may have become open
defecation free, but whether they hold the status over a period of time is too early to
infer.
2 Method and Structure
Water and sanitation interventions ground its claim in ‘big push’ theory, (Hutchings
and Carter 2018) in which all the predicaments of water and sanitation sector can
be addressed in a time-bound manner, which, in this case is less than over a half a
decade. Unfortunately, these are founded without long-term foresight—what is likely
to emerge post-infrastructural provision. Past precedents indicate that the results
have been slow moving and might require a few decades more if sanitation wellbeing is to be realized in true sense. Therefore, the measurement of deliverables
75
mortality rate of India is 35 deaths per 1000 live births. Diarrhea accounts for one of
the major killers of infants, i.e. 8% (UN Inter-agency Group Report 2017).
In order to seize deterioration in sanitary environment, the Government of India
launched an ambitious sanitation program—Swachh Bharat Mission in October
2014, aiming to end open defecation by 2019. The Campaign, being a national priority, is boasted to have achieved close to full toilet coverage as well as usage in rural
areas. The key findings of recently held National Annual Rural Sanitation Survey
2017–2018, reveal 77% of the households have access to toilets, 93% of those who
had access use the toilets regularly and 96% of the villages Open Defecation Free
(ODF) certified villages have been confirmed ODF (National Annual Rural Sanitation Survey Provisional Report 2018; Joshi 2018). The significance of access to safe
water and sanitation has been underscored since independence. There have been a
number of programs and schemes beginning from National Water Supply and Sanitation program (1954) to the last of the interventions Nirmal Bharat Abhiyaan (2014)
(Alok 2010; Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation 2014), which have focused
on toilet provision and ending open defecation for the last six decades. However,
there have always been a certain proportion of people that inadvertently remained to
practice open defecation in rural regions cutting across all the interventions made so
far.
Another herculean task that remains to be ensured to new Individual House Hold
Latrines is the adequate water supply for allied uses—pour washing the feces or
to perform post defecation cleanliness routines. Although access to drinking water
resources is impressive in India, but it is imperative to locate whether the number
of potable drinking water a household is able to collect is adequate or not. It calls
for increased emphasis on availability of domestic water rather than irrigational or
industrial usage, which deals with the everyday usage of water requirements. Water
provision is allied to and figures as an important determinant in defining better
sanitation practices (Rosenqvist et al. 2016; Sultana 2018; Mohan 2017).
The intervention, therefore, is more likely to provide the population a rudimentary
level of sanitation services, hurried to label full coverage of toilets as a resolution to
obliterate open defecation as problem. Rural communities may have become open
defecation free, but whether they hold the status over a period of time is too early to
infer.
2 Method and Structure
Water and sanitation interventions ground its claim in ‘big push’ theory, (Hutchings
and Carter 2018) in which all the predicaments of water and sanitation sector can
be addressed in a time-bound manner, which, in this case is less than over a half a
decade. Unfortunately, these are founded without long-term foresight—what is likely
to emerge post-infrastructural provision. Past precedents indicate that the results
have been slow moving and might require a few decades more if sanitation wellbeing is to be realized in true sense. Therefore, the measurement of deliverables