Recommendations:
• Delhi Master Plan should have clear cut vision & plan to make the city Open Defecation Free (ODF) by 2015.
• Provision needs to be made in the policies for allowing construction of individual toilets in slums. Based on NUSP guidelines, currently the policy guidelines are detrimental to improv sanitation situation in the city. As per the guidelines, the slum dwellers are not allowed to put up a brick in the house as it is illegal. The onus lies on various agencies to ensure that the same is possible for such settlements and that the communities in these settlements are not harassed by police/forest official for building toilets in their HH premises. This shall be in accordance to the land tenure and based on NUSP guidelines. However, building of toilets shall not give the community the ownership of the land per se.
• Various effective community mobilization tools & techniques need to be adopted to mobilize entire Delhi involving all stakeholders Vis Citizen’s, NGOs, Civil Societies, Slum Dwellers, Departments, Media etc.
• No construction of community toilets should happen unless and until the demand is generated by the community and in those areas where households have no access to space to construct individual toilets. Further for any community toilets constructed in such settlement, the agencies doing the same needs to give a handholding support to the community for a minimum of 6 months before it withdraws from the community and the same is handed over to the user community who shall henceforth manage and run the same.
• Open Defecation Free (ODF) wards/slums need to be prioritized for all development schemes.
• Community toilets should have features to address the needs of children, aged, disa
bled and women and should be user friendly.
Government Initiatives
The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) envisage extending access to improved sanitation to at least half the urban population by 2015 and 100% access by 2025. This implies extending coverage to households without improved sanitation and providing proper sanitation facilities in public places to make cities open defecation free. The government had launched various schemes to address the issues of sanitation such as Jawahar Lal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM), Rajiv Awas Yojana, Integrated Low Cost Sanitary Schemes (ILCSS) etc.
Community Led Approach
The Citizen Led Total Sanitation approach is a powerful tool for collective behaviour change that promotes participatory community analysis and collective local action. Using the principles of the Community Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) approach, it addresses the issue of sanitation as a public good arising as a result of collective community effort and local action by community groups, and not as a private good owned and used by an individual household. This also entails that CLTS views sanitation primarily as an issue of collective behaviour change, with technology as a significant but secondary issue to be addressed by triggered communities themselves. Communities could benefit from external facilitation to access information on technology on a demand responsive basis, as required. The key principles of the CLTS approach are as given below:
• Establishing appropriate institutional frameworks: Giving local governments a central role in scaling up and sustainability.
• Using a holistic and all inclusive approach that focuses on communities and not households. Natural leaders are motivated, trained and supported to lead community mobilization in their area of influence.
• Low dependency on external subsidy: Leading to higher achievement utilizing limited government finances.
• Focus on elimination of open defecation: Leading to acceptance of locally available, accessible, affordable, innovative and customizable technologies
• Igniting behaviour change – sustainable, community monitored, focused on outcomes.
• Market development (development of sustainable supply chain as per community needs): Promoting the availability of sanitary materials and allowing private suppliers to respond to the demand.
