From Gyanendra Mishra, UDAAN, Aligarh

Posted 19 April 2007

Dear Sir/Madam,

I work for an NGO called UDAAN in Aligarh and neighbouring districts. We provide training to Gram Pradhans, motivators, village functionaries and other stakeholders on water and sanitation issues. We also support the Government in the Total Sanitation Campaign in mobilising the community for construction of low cost leach pit toilets at village level. Additionally, we implement force lift handpumps in schools to lift and store water without motor and electricity. This has made many school toilets usable, which had become defunct due to non-availability of water.

From Bhawna Vajpai, The Loomba Trust, New Delhi

Posted 7 July 2008

I work for the UK based Loomba Trust, committed to upgrading and constructing water supply, sanitation and hygiene facilities in schools under its WASH initiatives. We aim to work in 1,000 schools across India (rural areas and small towns) in collaboration with state governments.

Original Query: V. Kurian Baby, Socio-Economic Unit Foundation (SEUF), Kerala

Posted: 3 August 2006

Reforms in water and sanitation (watsan) sector have by now become institutionalized through: (a) pilot testing of alternate service delivery models by donors and GoI in selected locations and subsequent scaling up into programmes such as Swajaldhara and TSC across the country; (b) evidences of community acceptance, confidence and credibility in genuine reforms (c) demonstrated willingness to pay for assured, reliable and quality water services demonstrated at community level and (d) vesting watsan governance as a desirable responsibility to PRIs.

From Vimala Ramachandran, ERU Consultants Pvt. Ltd., New Delhi

Posted 16 January 2009

I am Vimala Ramachandran working with the Educational Resource Unit at ERU Consultants Pvt. Ltd.

My colleagues - Bharat K. Patni and Nishi Mehrotra - and I are working on a field-based study to explore the inter-linkages between water, sanitation and school participation, with specific reference to adolescent girls. We are conducting this study for UNICEF Regional Office for South Asia and UNICEF India Office. We plan to commence our fieldwork in Uttar Pradesh in February 2009.

The report highlight a 10 day intensive and interactive programme, The International Learning Exchange (ILE) in water, sanitation and hygiene which was designed and conducted by United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) India in cooperation with the Ministry of Rural Development, Government of India and Governments of five states that were visited from 13 to 23 November 2006.

“Experiences with Ecosan Systems to Provide Sustainable Sanitation for Schools in Kenya and India” written by Rahul Ingle, Christian Rieck and Elisabeth v. Münch published in 2009 by Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit (GTZ) and Ecosan Services Foundation (ESF), paper describes the experiences and lessons learnt from using ecosan systems in some schools in Kenya and India.

The paper highlights various issues relating to sanitation solutions such as reasons for failure septic tanks systems and associated pollute ground water.  On the other hand, flush toilet system and the sewage system, which goes with modern day personal hygiene and cleanliness, are part of the environmental problem and not the solution. Consider the huge amount of clean water that is used to carry a small quantity of human excreta, S.Vishwanath and Chitra Vishwanath titled “Composting toilets – the future of sanitation?” writes that in such a scenario one emerging solution is a dry composting toilet.

Evaluation of the Rooftop Rainwater Harvesting Project.
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Source : UNICEF

The article entitled, “Incredible Medepally: so clean and green” written by Usha Turaga-Revelli, a senior journalist based in Hyderabad in 25 Dec 2008 highlights that perhaps no other village is cleaner than Medepally in Khamman district of Andhra Pradesh. According to the study there is 100-per cent toilet coverage to rain water harvesting; from soak pits in every house to clean streets Medepally has done it all.

This case study describes about the 525 members of the 48 SHGs in Medepally haven't limited their good work to maintaining sanitation in the village. They have also got together to provide clean drinking water and ensure maintenance of the ground water and water purification plant set up underneath the main water tank of Medepally by the SHGs, the chief source of drinking. According to study, the women worked out cost of the purified water and also chalked out a timeframe in which to recover the money spent on the project. Today, a 20-litre can of purified water is sold at a mere one rupee. Similar sized cans bought from nearby towns come at the commercial price of Rs.40. A minimum of 300 cans are supplied to the village households in a day. This results in a monthly income of not less that Rs.10,000 to the woman's self help group.