Sanitation: Modelling Best Practices

Tapas Kumar Datta . July 7, 2013

Recognizing the importance of sanitation and its criticality in determining the success and failure of the livelihood projects, PRADAN is keen on modelling best practices in the Drinking Water and Sanitation sector that can be replicated by others such as partner NGOs and state governments. This article is a study of the PRADAN experience.

Tracing her journey from her roots to the present, the author reconnects with her deep desire ‘to make a difference’ to the lives of people and reaffirms her decision to work to help the underprivileged rural poor

P RADAN has been engaged with the rural communities, especially women’s SHGs, across seven states in the country for about three decades now. Empirical evidence from its experience in the economic sector has made it realize that losses, both in terms of medical expenses and person days for engagement in productive work, are mainly due to the lack of basic services such as health, nutrition, safe drinking water and sanitation in the rural communities. The lack of hygiene and its consequent illnesses could offset the gains in the natural resource management and the livelihood sectors.

PRADAN’s intervention in the Drinking Water and Sanitation (DW&S) sector is relatively recent compared to its longstanding involvement in the livelihoods sector, both on- and off-farm. DW&S is neither the mainstay of PRADAN’s work nor is it its historical or current corporate mandate. The size and spread of its DW&S projects nationwide is miniscule compared to its livelihood projects. However, recognizing the importance of sanitation and its criticality in determining the success and failure of the livelihood projects, PRADAN is keen on modelling best practices in DW&S, which can be replicated by others such as partner NGOs and state governments. PRADAN’s small but robust intervention in the DW&S sector in Koderma (Jharkhand), Purulia (West Bengal) and Kandhamal (Odisha) districts have already shown encouraging results in the last three years of its inception. On offer are simple, cost-effective, community-owned and managed models of DW&S that can be replicated on a wider scale.

As part of the modelling process, PRADAN thought it necessary to first analyse all the facets of the intervention, capture the experience of the stakeholders—both the communities as well as the implementers—with these systems and benchmark the current intervention against some critical factors that determine whether or not these could qualify as ‘replicable models’. This then could make it possible to lay down guidelines for setting up both the hardware as well as the software components of similar interventions in the DW&S sector.

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