Subsidy for household toilets has been one of the most sensitive and widely debated issues, notes Kumar Alok in ‘Squatting with Dignity: Lessons from India’ (www.sagepublications.com). He traces that the reduction in the subsidy amount to Rs 600 for BPL families was a major policy change in TSC (Total Sanitation Campaign) of 1999, as compared to CRSP (Central Rural Sanitation Programme) which provided Rs 2,000 per household.
TSC subsidy was not supposed to cover the entire cost of construction of household toilet as in the case of CRSP but was to be treated as incentive for adopting a toilet and the corresponding good hygiene behaviour, the author explains.
He cites the KAP (Knowledge, Aptitude, and Practice) study, conducted during 1996-97 with the support of the IIMC (Indian Institute of Mass Communication), for the finding that about 51 per cent of households not having a toilet were willing to spend up to Rs 1,000 for the construction of a decent sanitary toilet; and only 2 per cent of the total households indicated that the government subsidy was a motivating factor for them to construct toilets.
“These findings were further corroborated by the fact that a large number of toilets were not used for the purpose for which they were constructed but for anything else including storage of grains, keeping the goats and sheep, some were converted into bathrooms, and in a few cases these were even used as places of worship.”
Zero-subsidy
Alok observes that the promotion of low-cost leach pit technology demystified the perception about the existing technologies especially the prevailing belief that only septic tank toilets were effective and sanitary ones. An interesting example he mentions is of ISP (Intensive Sanitation Project) in Medinipur district in West Bengal, where over about 8 years (till 1998), more than 2 lakh families had constructed single pit toilets, even without any subsidy.
“In this case, RKLMP (Ramakrishna Mission Lokshiksha Parishad) with a team of highly dedicated professionals working in tandem with panchayats provided the leadership throughout the district both for the purpose of social mobilisation and running the supply chain to convert the demand for toilets into actual construction and use of the facilities.”
The author avers that ISP has proved the point made by Gandhiji that it does not require money to be neat, clean and dignified.
Empowering study.
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