Four days of mind boggling discussions on service delivery, and mapping of outcomes and outputs on a white board led us to believe that mapping jurisdictions and administrative boundaries would be a simple exercise! A morning walk around Ward 180 mapping surface garbage, dumpsters and a talk with Ramky staff collecting garbage proved to be a reality check. It was obvious that collecting official data and standards set by protocol was just the first step, and most likely relatively simpler, in understanding the greater picture of jurisdictions and accountability. This meant that intense brainstorming sessions and coffee chats in air conditioned rooms had to be supplemented with data collection trips to different government and Ramky offices. Nevertheless Akshaya and I set out to collect data after Nivetha and Suraj had managed to locate the respective offices and obtain appointments for us.

Ramky, a private agency that manages garbage collection and disposal in Chennai, was our first stop. We spoke with the person who handled complaints and were made to understand that Ramky had a structured way of working. There is a three-tier hierarchy starting with the supervisor reporting to the unit officer, who in turn reports to the zone head. Workers work in three shifts, the first starting at 6am! There is a step-wise procedure: garbage is swept from the streets, collected using tricycles and finally compactors. Ramky uses compactors of different sizes and employs different number of people depending upon the size of the ward. After the garbage is collected it is taken to the transfer station to check the weight, since Ramky is paid on the basis of garbage collected. From there the garbage is taken to dumping areas at Perungudi and Kodungaiyur. Different systems like the Management Information System (MIS) and Vehicle Tracking Supervisor System (VTS) are in place for monitoring and planning. While the MIS is used to collect and process information regarding garbage sites and routes, the VTS is used to take pictures of the sites and areas and sending it to office. There is a toll-free number that citizens can call to report complaints and their grievances are located and the concerned authority informed.

It all seemed straight-forward till the person who was giving us information had to enquire things from another department – the other employees grew circumspect and defensive. They refused to give information regarding their relations with the government departments and relations with councillors. Unable to access maps and quantitative data of garbage and dumpsters we left with the image of a photograph on the wall behind the receptionist – the Chairman of the Ramky Group of companies, standing in a huge dump yard with his arms wide open welcoming garbage.

Our second stop was at the offices of the Assistant Commissioner of Police to obtain data on road accidents, pedestrian crossings and road safety in general. After successfully making it past the innumerable gatekeepers who controlled access up the hierarchy, we met the police officer in charge. He initially agreed to help us with the information and requested that we provide him with a list of the data that we needed. After about half an hour of writing and waiting, he inserted a caveat for his promised support – a letter from our mentor addressed to his supervisors authorising him to share the data.

The most valuable lesson we learnt was that data collection from agencies involved in providing civic services in Chennai involves shuttling from agency to agency, desk to desk being told to adhere to innumerable formalities each different for the different agencies and desks! We experienced how these different agencies were at best indifferent to the problem at hand! We now know that patience is integral to our search for data. We have more trips lined up so stay tuned for more lessons in data collection! In the meantime, it’s back to the white board for us!

Ripon Building – Corporation of Chennai stands elegant, but only insiders can tell you about the drab work life inside this heritage building

My work involves a lot of field visits to the Corporation of Chennai – primarily for data collection, but most often than not, to sit around and wait for hours with the hope that an influential government official would agree to listen to my research findings.

It was during these long waiting hours did I find myself thinking about the work environment at the Corporation.

We work in a fancy office with biometric doors and a beautiful cafeteria, but the list of complaints never ends – “It’s so cold in here that I can’t work today” is something that tops our complaint list. Other recurring complaints are about the lousy music in the elevator and the bad service at the food court. Though the management should be lauded for their attempts at trying to provide us with the most conducive environment for us to deliver our best outputs, we continually choose to get worked up about petty issues that have little or no relevance to our actual work.

On the contrary, the Corporation of Chennai, where the guardians of the city are housed, is in a pitiable condition. Metro construction is on in full swing outside the Ripon Building, and the endless renovation work inside the building has left most office rooms dusty, dirty and dull. Apart from the Commissioners, the Mayor and a few other important officials, nobody has the luxury of even an air conditioner during days of scorching heat and humidity. Fans do not have regulators and power cuts in the afternoon are a common occurrence. They do not have a fancy cafeteria, and the elevator is so inefficient that the slowest of walkers can climb the steps faster. The computer systems are ancient, and no one is well trained to operate it. Stacks of extremely important papers are all over the place and no storage facilities to accommodate any of these. It is just astonishing to see the primitiveness of everything in the building – time stands still there.

Metro Rail digging work under way on the lawns of the Ripon Building  — Photo: R.Ravindran

Why would anybody want to work in such a place? How can we expect the officials to come up with city solutions in an environment that breeds demotivation? I know that my colleagues would definitely not work there. Nor would I, but if I ever do – I would certainly rebel and fret a lot about the lack of infrastructure.

The Chennai Corporation is the oldest in India and the Ripon Building looks magnificent – but only from the outside. The story is not different for other zonal offices in the city –it is in fact worse. Unless and until we upgrade the infrastructure at these offices, the educated tech-savvy youth will never have the incentive to quit their fancy corporate jobs in favour of government jobs, and the less competent ones will continue to work there. It is like a vicious cycle which needs to be broken very soon.

- Somya Sethuraman, lead researcher – Sanitation, Transparent Chennai

An international study by the Hygiene Council rated 12 countries on the basis of personal and household hygiene. The scores for handwashing and household hygiene are below:

Percentage of respondents who wash hands 5+ times daily

The research study sought to characterize the key determinants of personal and household hygiene behaviours that affect health cross-culturally; to pinpoint the key factors in different personalities and settings that determine hygiene behaviour, and highlight those that can be modified to improve health. Read more.

The India Human Development Report 2011 pointed out that open defecation is a serious threat to health and nutritional status in India. Despite the evident increase in the number of toilets in India, open defection is still practiced widely in India. The situation is more dismal in rural areas, especially in states where more than 75 per cent of the population do not have access to toilets. According to the report, about half of Indian households lacked access to sanitation facilities in 2008-09. More than 60 per cent of households in Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Orissa, Rajasthan and Uttarakhand were without toilets. However, the report also says that inequality between the states has narrowed down, and minorities and weaker sections have moved up the ladder in terms of many development indicators including access to toilets.

A government girls’ school in Ernakulam, Kerala, will soon be the first school in the country to get an electronic public toilet.

This is part of the suchi@school (Sustainable Comprehensive Hygiene Initiative) project, an initiative of local CPI (M) Member of Parliament comrade P. Rajeev. The project aims to ensure adequate sanitation facilities – toilets and urinals – in all government and government-aided schools in Ernakulam district.

A number of schools will be fitted with e-toilets, which have automatic doors and will self-clean after each use. Where water is scarce, recycling units using biomembrane reactors will be installed.

Read more….

Transparent Chennai (TC) has set out on an outreach agenda to share its research and talk to interested individuals and groups about the issue of public toilets in Chennai. TC’s research on public toilets began because of a need expressed by female informal sector workers during the course of a public meeting organized in 2009. Recently TC met with a group of women workers from Working Women’s Forum, Chennai. The Working Women’s Forum is an association for women in the unorganized and informal sector. We met a group of 15 women workers from various parts of the city.

When we asked them as to how many of them have ever used a public toilet we weren’t too surprised with their response. Most of the women were living in settlements without proper toilet facilities and resort to open defecation. “We don’t have a choice”, they said. Some said there was no public toilet in and around the area they lived, while others admit the presence of few toilets in their neighborhood which are in a bad condition. “2000 families and 1 toilet, will it be enough?” asked one of the women workers. They emphasized on the condition of public toilets in certain market areas where there are a lot of informal sector workers. In some of these areas the stench from nearby toilets is intolerable but unfortunately the workers cannot afford to move from there as their livelihood depends on it. What these women said only confirmed the purpose for our research on public toilets.

Some of these women have worked as health workers in slums teaching basic sanitation and personal hygiene to slum dwellers. Their training involved teaching people how to use a public toilet. They spoke of a time when Ms. Shanta Sheela Nair (currently Secretary to GOI, Ministry of Mines and former Home Secretary to Tamil Nadu Government and former Managing Director of Chennai Chennai Metropolitan Water Supply Board) was holding office in Chennai and sanitation not being an issue at that point of time. As health workers these women had a duty of reporting all the problems in the slums to Ms. Nair, who would immediately call the responsible authorities to attend to the problems at once. Many a times these health workers would voluntarily take the authorities on a visit to the slums to show them the problem.

The women seemed well aware of the politics associated with public toilets in the city. They remarked that a change in government always brings about some measures to renovate the public toilets but analogous to that they also increase the user charges. “The Corporation is only interested to work where there is more money involved” said one of the participants, “and not where there is a slum. All they want is Lanjam”.

As we proceeded with the presentation the women started to get more involved and everyone had something to contribute to the discussion. While they recognized that there was a need to improve existing toilets in the city they also expressed a need for more toilets in the city. “Toilets kandippa venum” they chorused. One of the women even recommended that we create an ad campaign for this issue just like Revathy in the Domex advertisement!

As we were wrapping up, a woman called out to us and said “When you mentioned that the presentation was about public toilets we felt quite uncomfortable and were unsure of what we were going to hear about. But we now realize that you have spoken about a very important issue… Next time we walk on a road we may look at a public toilet with a different lens”.

- Adya Shankar

Total Sanitation Campaign (TSC) was implemented in 1999 by the Government of India to achieve universal rural sanitation coverage by 2012. The community-led, demand-driven approach of this programme seeks to achieve not only 100 percent open defecation free communities but also broader environmental sanitation objectives such as promotion of improved hygiene behaviors and solid/liquid waste management.

After more than a decade of its implementation, a report by Water and Sanitation Program assesses and analyses this flagship programme on the basis of primary and secondary data on the TSC to arrive at an understanding of the processes, outputs and outcomes at a national level and across the states. Let’s take a look at some of the highlights of the report.

Figure 1 indicates the progress made by TSC so far. TSC is currently being implemented at scale in 606 districts of 30 states/Union Territories (UTs). After sluggish progress in the 80s and 90s, rural sanitation coverage (individual household latrines) nearly tripled from 22 per cent in 2001 to 65 per cent in 2010. These are the same years when TSC has been in operation across all states in India.

Figure 1: Rural Sanitation Coverage in India

However, national performance aggregates conceal significant disparities among states and districts when it comes to the achievement of TSC goals. The following figure speaks for itself:

Figure 2: How are States Performing on the Total Sanitation Campaign?

While the rating for the worse performing state is as low as 15 per cent DN Haveli, it is 88 per cent for the best performing state of Kerala.

These final aggregated scores for each state are based on multiple indicators – input, output, process and outcome indicators. Let’s have a look at the state of Tamil Nadu and discuss one of these indicators:

Figure 3: How much have states spent out of TSC funds?

Tamil Nadu has been able to utilize only 58 per cent of the total allocated funds so far even though TSC’s implementation phase is nearing its end. At present, the rural sanitation coverage for Tamil Nadu is 70 per cent (from Figure 2) which is a lot better than other states but perhaps, better utilization will make the overall ranks for Tamil Nadu better. Better spending will inevitably have positive spillover effects on the overall performance of the state.

Another interesting graph in the report is regarding the household toilet construction pace – current and required. Apparently, Tamil Nadu’s current construction capacity is 1288 toilets per day against the required capacity of 3109 toilets per day in order to achieve 100 per cent coverage by 2012. The following figure reflects the same:

Figure 4: Household Toilet Construction Pace – Current and Required

Finally, given the current and annual growth rate in coverage, India will attain complete coverage in individual household toilets by 2018.

Figure 5: Country and States Achieving Universal Sanitation (Household) Coverage (Year Wise)

The above graph indicates that Tamil Nadu, among other states, is lagging behind even though is one of the few states which show higher overall ranks for rural sanitation coverage.

More than 5.5 crore household toilets still need to be constructed – 3.1 crore APL and 2.4 crore BPL. Currently, India, on an average, constructs 29,247 toilets per day. However, India needs to construct more than 76,498 household toilets per day in the next two years to achieve 100 percent coverage which means doubling its efforts. How do we do it?

References: https://www.wsp.org/wsp/sites/wsp.org/files/publications/WSP_India_TSC_Report_Vol_1_Press.pdf?

- Somya Sethuraman

The Government of India launched the National Urban Sanitation Policy in 2008 to achieve 100 per cent sanitation coverage in Indian cities, through methods that encourage community participation. In this regard, the Ministry of Urban Development also allotted Rs. 13 crore to support cities to prepare their City Sanitation Plans (CSPs). A district level study was undertaken to rate the level of sanitization on 19 broad parameters called the “urban sanitation indicators”. These Service Level Benchmarks reveal that none of the cities in India, including Chennai, are close to achieving complete sanitization. Chennai, in fact, has been rated as a city that needs considerable improvement in its sanitary conditions. Yet we see very little effort and money committed towards sanitation.

While many states have already undertaken the process of writing their CSPs, the state government of Tamil Nadu has been completely irresponsive on this front. None of the cities in Tamil Nadu have been granted any funds to initiate the writing of CSPs for their city. Sources say that the Tamil Nadu government hasn’t been proactive in taking this up. For instance, Chennai which has only 715 public toilets serving a population of approximately 5 million, has done very little to improve access to this very basic public amenity. The informal sector in Chennai, which accounts for 70 per cent of the jobs, goods and services utilized by all, largely depends on the amenities provided by the city for its sanitation needs. 1 million people live in Chennai’s slums and over 1200 declared slums accommodate approximately 23 per cent of the city’s population. They lack all access to adequate shelter and services. Open defecation is still a common practice and women and children feel safer defecating in open fields close to their workplaces or homes rather than having to walk long distances to urinate in dimly lit city toilets. Considering the current status of sanitation, why are sanitation investments so less and programs not pro-poor? Why do sound policies and programs fail to take off in certain regions and states while they do wonderfully well in others?

A recent World Bank study – “The Political Economy of Sanitation: How can we increase investment and improve service for the poor?” discusses operational experiences from case studies from four different countries including India. It shows that the current limited focus on sanitation is driven largely by political motivation in the context of competing demands for resources, and to a lesser extent by technical or economic considerations.

“The case study looks at the political drivers for the success of the Total Sanitation Campaign in rural Maharashtra. Designed as a supply-driven sanitation program, the campaign has a set of defined components that include information, education and communication, community mobilization activities, construction of household toilets and community complexes, and provision of toilets in government schools and anganwadis. The India case study examines why the Total Sanitation Campaign failed to take off in most the states until 2004–05 and provides political economy insights on the Maharashtra success story”

To download the report, click here.

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Somya Sethuraman

Policy makers and planners often neglect local conditions and local knowledge while formulating plans and policies for their region. Consequently, when plans do not reflect ground realities, they fail and cause opposition from the local communities. Hence it is important to properly understand local beliefs and attitudes to devise programs that are sound, cost-effective and sustainable in the long run. An article in The Guardian discusses community participation as an effective tool for solving problems that are localized in nature. It talks about Africa’s sanitation crisis and how regions within the continent are dealing with this problem. Some interesting quotes from the article:

“Know the area, know the people.It is only through talking and listening to the people on the ground that we will be able to make long-lasting and sustainable moves out of poverty. This is especially pertinent when trying to educate people about sanitation and hygiene and bringing about a change in behaviour.”

“In many rural areas in west Africa, the practice of open-air defecation is ritualised and bound in tradition. Beyond individual differences, the members of a group or society are united by similar ways of thinking and behaving, and will react to situations in similar ways. Our research showed that reasons for resistance to using a latrine included beliefs that one might be possessed by demons, lose magical powers or live a shorter life. Some believe a toilet is meant only for wealthy people or that, if somebody feeds you, you should in turn defecate in their field.”

Read more..

A friend shared this youtube video and I think it captures the essence of the problem we have in hand:

Women still don’t openly talk about their sanitation needs.

If we don’t articulate our concerns and problems, how can we expect our voices to be heard?

Let’s start talking about Sanitation

Source: http://blog.acumenfund.org/2010/12/10/sanitation-is-sexy-challenge-winners-announced/

Somya Sethuraman