Sustainability of Community Led Total Sanitation in Rural India A Comparative Study of Chhattisgarh and West Bengal

Abstract

Sanitation has been one of the major developmental concerns across most of the newlineunderdeveloped and poor economies of the globe. Poor sanitation facilities and unhygienic newlinepractices lead to health hazards and economic loss to the communities. The fecal-oral newlinetransmission is the main cause of diarrhea in infants and many a times it becomes fatal. newlineThe WHO data shows that diarrhea is responsible for nearly 5,25,000 deaths of children newlinebelow five years of age annually across the world. Due to inadequate sanitary facilities and newlineunawareness towards health and economic risks, people practice open defecation. In India, newlinespecially the rural regions, the coverage of sanitation was 38.7 percent. This means that newlinealmost two third of the rural population was not having access to proper sanitation facilities newlinewhich was indeed a matter of shame for a large economy. To address this issue, Swachh newlineBharat Mission was launched in the year 2014 that aimed at making India open defecation newlinefree by 2019. newlineIn order to improve the sanitation practices, it is more important to change the behavior of newlinethe communities towards sanitation rather than just constructing toilets. Several studies newlinehave identified that merely constructing a toilet does not ensure that people will stop newlinedefecating in the open. They need to use it and stop the habit of open defecation. The newlineCommunity Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) is a community based participatory approach that newlinehas been successful in making thousands of communities across the world to become open newlinedefecation free and adopt improved sanitation facilities. The approach works on the newlinecollective behavior change of the community towards sanitation and hygiene. It ensures newlinethat people understand the serious consequences of poor sanitation on health, economy and newlineenvironment and further decide to improve the sanitation facilities on their own. This newlineapproach had been adopted during the Swachh Bharat Mission and has been very newlinesuccessful in achieving sustainable results. newline