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Impressions from Nanded: Three variations ofurban CLTS meet

India’s population accounts forapproximately 1/7th of the world’s population. The Government of India has theimmense challenge of governing and providing services for over 1.2 billion people. Aswe were touching down in Mumbai on the 14th March 2012, and the infamous smellof the city hit our noses, I was reminded of the enormity of the task of governanceand service provision for 1/7th of the world. The fact that Rose, Susan and I were inIndia to learn about the implementation of CLTS in the urban context of Nanded City[1], meant that we were acutely aware of the relationship between what we weresmelling and sanitation service provision in cities in India.

Striking figures: toilets vs mobile phonesThe day before our arrival (March 13th, the Census Commissioner of India releasedcensus data that reported that 49.8% of the Indian population (about 600 millionpeople!) practice open defecation. This was in stark contrast with the statistic that anestimated 68% of Indians (about 800 million people) own mobile phones –demonstrating that financial barriers were not the major problem, but ratherprioritization of investments at household level. However, as one participant pointedout, these statistics need to be understood in terms of livelihoods. Mobile phones arenow not only used for personal communication, but have become essential forconducting business, as well as maintaining professional networks in India (andindeed this is a global trend). Toilets and sanitation, at first glance, do not have thesame significance for livelihood (although sanitation does of course have a directimpact on one’s livelihood in terms of health status and ability to work). Given thissituation, any social movement that is geared towards improving sanitation would dowell to integrate a mobile component, for communication, coordination, monitoringand advocacy.

CLTS in the urban context

So far, CLTS has been implemented primarily in rural areas. The belief has been –even amongst CLTS practitioners – that urban sanitation is far too complicated andnot conducive for the strict zero­ subsidy approach. The first attempt to adapt andimplement CLTS methodology in an urban area was in the city of Kalyani in WestBengal (near Kolkata, within the Kolkata Metropolitan Development Authority) inIndia in 2008­2009. The second was in Mathare, village number 10 – an informalarea of approximately 20,000 people in Nairobi, Kenya. The third is now NandedCity, with a population of 500,000 people located in Maharashtra State. Due to thesheer scale of the problem of open defecation, the CLTS approach is particularlyimportant in India.

We had been invited by the Nanded­Waghala Municipal Corporation to shareexperience from Mathare at a sharing and learning workshop on urban CLTS.

The case of KalyaniKalyani [2] was also represented by the ex­mayor of Kalyani, Dr. Shantanu Jha, avisionary leader and pioneer of urban CLTS. Hearing about the work in Kalyani andNanded was indeed inspiring. Kalyani was the first city in India to be declared opendefecation free in 2008. After receiving word, the State Government of Kolkata tookan interest, and in January 2009 also declared it officially ODF. However, the Indiangovernment has not adopted CLTS as an official policy and as such has no frameworkfor assessing ODF status. Instead, the Indian government is implementing mainlysubsidy­focused development projects, such as Basic Services for the Urban Poor(BSUP) which provides low­cost, upgraded housing options for urban populations ininformal settlements.

At the time of the urban CLTS work inKalyani, the then mayor refused funds to build toilets and when he could not refuseBSUP funds, used them to reward those communities who had adopted CLTS andwere working towards becoming ODF, once they had made significant progress. Inan external evaluation, the World Bank’s Water and Sanitation programme (WSP)pinpointed good governance as a key element in the success of urban CLTS inKalyani. It is important to note that Kalyani is also a smaller, less densely populatedcity (approximately 100,000 people) and does not have many of the larger urbaninformal settlements that we are familiar with in Nairobi. It is a planned city withwell laid out infrastructure. These three elements – good governance, relativelysparse population and planning – make it uniquely well­suited for urban CLTSimplementation.

The story of NandedThe Nanded case is also a story of a charismatic leader, Dr. Nipun Vinayak theMunicipal Commissioner for Nanded­Waghala Municipal Corporation. Rather thanbeing an elected official (as in the case of the Kalyani mayor) Nipun is an appointedofficer of the local government, allocating and managing the budget for localdevelopment. Nipun has long been a champion of CLTS, and brought this with himwhen he was appointed to the Nanded Corporation about a year and a half ago. Aspart of his work in facilitating a city sanitation plan – together with the mayor andother local elected leaders (called Corporators – the equivalent of Councillors inNairobi) – he invited two NGOs with experience in rural CLTS to lead the process ofurban CLTS in Nanded who then facilitated urban CLTS pilots in several locationsaround the city. They had successes and challenges and over several months began toscale up the work in 28 different areas of the city.

The urban CLTS work is taking placealongside several large­scale urban development works. Nanded is a holy site for theSikh community – as the location where the last Sikh Guru made his final ascent. Itis a major site for tourism and religious pilgrimage, and funding has been madeavailable to support the development of the area’s tourism, expand roads, upgradethe water treatment facilities and improve sewage treatment in the city. This poses achallenge but also an opportunity for urban CLTS and Nanded would do well to learnfrom the lessons of Kalyani, where urban CLTS was successfully implementedalongside several large­scale infrastructure projects, such as BSUP.

Monitoring urban CLTS processAt the workshop I shared my experience as a facilitator for monitoring andevaluation of urban CLTS, using new digital technology. I have a keen interest in theCLTS process, the lessons that can be drawn from ‘triggering’ (as applied to differentfields), and internal monitoring and external evaluation of CLTS. When integratedwith well­established participatory approaches, new technology can be used toevaluate the resources required (eg through baselines surveys), to effectivelycommunicate the sanitation situation and the need for investment in this area and tomonitor the progress toward ODF. Work on CLTS has continually highlighted theneed for improved monitoring and evaluation – and the proliferation of mobilephones represents an opportunity for citizens to become involved in monitoring thesanitation status of their cities. Of course, the political will also has to be strong toensure that information is received and acted upon by the relevant authorities.

Sanitation and governance

Contributors: Jamie Lundine [4]Topics: urban [5], monitoring [6], technology [7]

In light of the scale of the sanitation crisis in India – 600 million open defecators –the approach of government subsidized toilets will fall short. Dr. Shantanu Jha posedthe questions: is construction of toilets for 600 million people possible by thegovernment? How? By when? Can the government address this by providing free andsubsidized toilets? Despite lessons from elsewhere that have shown this approach tobe ineffective, it is still favoured by governments worldwide, including theGovernment of India.

However change is indeed taking place; CLTS has been implemented in over 51countries worldwide and as many as 15 governments have adopted CLTS as theirnational strategy for sanitation. CLTS provides an alternative, relatively low­costapproach but it requires courage and innovation. As Nipun put it: “Like they say,there’s nothing good about democracy except that its alternatives are worse. In thesame way, CLTS is not the best approach, but it is better than anything else we knowof.” We will look to Nanded over the coming months, to learn how they take thissocial movement forward and hope the ‘commandos’ and local government take upthe call to “leave no one behind” in the improvement of the sanitation situation in thecity.

Jamie Lundine

You may also like to read Jamie’s other blog post Learning from the communities inNanded [3]

Date: 3 April 2012

Source URL: http://www.communityledtotalsanitation.org/blog/impressions­nanded­three­variations­urban­clts­meet

Links[1] http://www.communityledtotalsanitation.org/resource/nanded­sanitation­story[2] http://www.communityledtotalsanitation.org/resource/kalyani­clts­urban­context[3] http://www.communityledtotalsanitation.org/blog/learning­communities­nanded[4] http://www.communityledtotalsanitation.org/contributors/jamie­lundine[5] http://www.communityledtotalsanitation.org/topics/urban[6] http://www.communityledtotalsanitation.org/topics/monitoring[7] http://www.communityledtotalsanitation.org/topics/technology