Panchayats should first be provided financial and technical support to develop a holistic sanitation plan, including solid and liquid waste management for their regions
Budget 2012 is set to give rural sanitation a much-needed impetus. Rural development and drinking water and sanitation minister Jairam Ramesh, who rather appropriately characterized the total sanitation campaign (TSC), the country’s flagship rural sanitation programme, as a “failure that is...neither total nor sanitation nor a campaign,” is now seeking to revamp the scheme with an enhanced budgetary allocation of approximately Rs 6,700 crore.

File photo of narrow lanes at Kathputli Nagar, New Delhi. Photo by Ankit Agrawal
This revamp has been a long time coming. Data on rural sanitation in India is rather depressing. In 2008, Unicef estimated a mere 21% of rural India was using improved sanitation compared with 52% of rural Bangladesh. No surprise then that India contributes 58% of the world’s population defecating in the open. Now, as the government proposes to expand its sanitation programmes and revamp implementation, it is worth analysing some of the factors that contributed to TSC’s failure to ensure that mistakes are not repeated and the enhanced allocations translate into improved outcomes. Read more
Source : livemint.com
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