India, Bhopal: consider urban poor as citizens and not beneficiaries

The Indian Government should consider urban poor as citizens and not beneficiaries, existing WASH policies should be reviewed with respect to ground reality, and the national urban sanitation policy should be integrated with slum and habitat development policies. These are some of the recommendations that came out of the National Workshop “From infrastructure to services: water and sanitation for the urban poor”, organised by WaterAid India, UN-HABITAT and the Government of Madhya Pradesh, held, from 6-8 March 2009 in Bhopal, India.

More than 100 participants from various backgrounds attended the three-day workshop: staff from WaterAid regional offices, state officials, mayors, and staff from civil society organisations. BJP Minister Babulal Gaur, Town Administration and Urban Development, Madhya Pradesh (MP), opened the event.

The workshop was organized to share the learnings and experiences of current WASH projects and programmes, which have in common pro-poor, community-led and gender responsive approaches for slum improvement focusing on water, sanitation and hygiene. One was the Slum Environment Sanitation Initiative (SESI), a joint initiative of WaterAid MP and UN-HABITAT and the municipal corporations in 65 slums of Bhopal, Indore, Jabalpur and Gwalior, started in November 2005. Other projects that provided good lessons are Community Toilets in Pune, Community Sanitation Programme of Society for Promotion of Area Resource Centres (SPARC) in various cities, and the Slum Networking Programme (SNP) of Mahila Housing Trust (MHT). IRC’s input included sharing highlights and lessons from our November 2008 Sanitation for the Urban Poor symposium.

Institutionalize involvement of civil society

On the last day recommendations for the government were written down – based on discussions in small groups. The recommendations say that “the government is mandated to ensure the provision of basic public water and sanitation services to all citizens and it is best placed in terms of reach and resources. It has already provided services on a large scale, but there are still large gaps in terms of the quantity and quality of services required, especially for the poor.” Civil society cannot fill these gaps, but it can facilitate the government to identify these gaps. One of the recommendations was therefore to “institutionalize civil society’s involvement and ensure a consultative process and a legitimate institutional space for participation of civil societies in implementing the policies for urban poor.”

Other recommendations were to lay down clear pro-poor principles and processes in guidelines, rules and regulations to implement existing national policies at state and local level; and to improve monitoring indicators to ensure clear accountability at the state level. The recommendations also focus on issues related to government service provision, such as:

• set up special purpose vehicles in each state to work closely with civil society to improve the quality of WASH service delivery;
• work out and publish the true cost for providing service and the levels of tariff and subsidy; and
• developing an integrated sanitation perspective, that is, review and strengthen each link in the sanitation chain from household or institution to waste disposal, re-use and re-cycling, in order to ensure environmentally sustainable sanitation services.

Recommendations for civil society focus on broadening perspectives; forums to network and share knowledge; improving internal organizational performance; working with (local) government; and citizen’s empowerment.

What next?

These recommendations will be shared with civil society groups through a consultation, to finalize them and make them as action oriented as possible. After that a steering group will be formed to push the recommendations forward with the government.

For more information contact:

Mamita Bora Thakkar , Regional Manager, WaterAid Bhopal, MamitaThakkar@wateraid.org

Ingeborg Krukkert, project officer IRC and participant of the workshop