West Bengal and Kerala, India
West Bengal
While Central Government formulates national policy for jointly financed programmes such as rural sanitation, Indian states formulate their own state policies and programmes. Two relatively successful approaches are those of West Bengal and Kerala. The approach in West Bengal emerged as the most successful of a series of pilot projects which UNICEF undertook with the respective state governments. It has had a considerable impact on the change in national policy.
The Mednipore Intensive Sanitation Project in West Bengal was formally launched in 1990 after some five years of work with the local NGO, the Rama Krishna Mission. The policy was, from the outset, to offer no subsidy to any households. A network of trained local volunteers offers a variety of technical options in latrine construction, with different costs to suit different abilities to pay. The volunteers get a small incentive when a household decides to build a latrine. Credit is available for the poor.
Associated policies generate local employment through training of masons, and demand for latrines through information and education. The Gram Panchayat is actively involved, and the "promotion" of latrines occasionally resorts to peer and local government pressure on community members. Important factors in the success are the extensive network and deep roots of the principle NGO, the high population density and consequent reduction of private places for defecation, high literacy rates and strong community organisation.
Kerala
The policy and programme in Kerala emerged from a bilateral sanitation project supported by Denmark and The Netherlands since early 1980. As in West Bengal there are specific factors at play: a high population density, reduction of private places for defecation, high literacy rates (including amongst women) and strong community organisation. Like West Bengal also, the NGO linkage is strong - in this case with two local NGOs, the literacy movement for public information and the Socio-Economic Unit Foundation which developed and tested the strategy and now provides training and backstopping to the national programme. Differences in the Kerala approach are the focus on community management - with cooperation between the local government, specially elected neighbourhood sanitation committees and other civic groups - and a stronger gender element in participation.
Characteristic for the Kerala policy and programme is the formation of local ward committees, each representing some 500 families and with a balance between women and men members. These committees make an inventory of sanitation in their areas and identify the households that need a subsidy for building a latrine. Subsidies are provided by the local government from its local resources, supplemented by voluntary support from the neighbourhoods and/or local voluntary groups. Central and State Governments only contribute funds for information and training.
Fundamental to the local successes of policy and programme are: low cost technology, transparency in household selection and fund use, promotion to men and women householders, construction by trained masons, many of them women, and monitoring of construction quality. Subsequently sound operation and use is also crucial to success.
In Kerala many males work overseas so there was a shortage of male masons. Moreover, men and women households preferred to have female masons for work in their house or compound since costs were the same and the quality of the work was equally good or better.
In 1997 five districts launched a programme for 100% sanitation coverage by 2000. Clean Kerala ("sanitation for all") became an all-state policy and programme soon after when sanitation had come out as the second priority of rural women and men in the People's Planning Campaign. This campaign set the priorities for decentralisation of development initiatives and funding from State to Local Government.
