Dear Susana Community,

I would like to present a current project of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH - Advisory Services in Environmental Management, the Indo-German Environment Programme (GIZ-ASEM).

GIZ supported the Ministry of Urban Development (MoUD), Government of India in the implementation of the National Urban Sanitation Policy (NUSP) through the preparation of city-wide City Sanitation Plans (CSP) in six selected cities all over India.

As a next step, GIZ in cooperation with a local NGO, is focusing on the implementation of a pilot project in Raipur (Chhattisgarh) to show the feasibility of the City Sanitation Documents and encourage the implementation of city wide sanitation improvements.

Since the independence of Madya Pradesh in 2001, rapid population growth (from approx. 670 000 in 2001 to more than 1 million in 2012) has brought the cities infrastructure to its limits. Raipur contains more than 100 artificial and natural lakes which are important for the inhabitants but often used for discharge of domestic wastewater.

The study aims to develop a technical-scientific concept of a decentralized wastewater treatement concept attached to an urban waterbody. As a first step a comprehensive field survey on a household level should deliver catchment properties like water supply, use and fuctionality of septic tanks, solid waste disposal and the condition and coverage of the drainage system. Alongside the wastewater characteristics in quantity and quality into the waterbody will be determined as a baseline for the conceptual design of a treatment facility. The study will have a closer look on septic tanks, the ecological integration of the treatment facility into the lake premises, phosphorus elimination to stop euthropication and the educational value of the decentralized treatment pilot.

The minimum objective is to remove faecal contaminated wastewater from the storm water drains and stop the discharge of untreated wastewater into the waterbody to ensure public health and improve environmental protection.

If any similar projects come to your mind we would be keen to include your experciences and lessons learned in our study.

We will try to keep you on track.

Dear Moritz,

You could maybe make a similar post on the India water portal (www.indiawaterportal.org/) and the India sanitation Portal (www.indiasanitationportal.org/) to find some contributions to your study.

also by "Independence of Madhya pradesh" I guess you meant to say 'since its (Chattisgarh) seperation from Madhyapradesh'. Chattisgarh is a state that was carved out of the existing state of Madhya pradesh and I guess the population growth in Raipur took place as a result of migration due to the new "capital" status, is it?

regards

Rahul

Hey,
I'm a student at grammar school in Switzerland and working current at my A-level work with "the sanitation crises in India" as subject.

I want to know how you could solve the inadequate sanitation in Indian and what progress are beeing made.

In the rural part of India it seems that the gouvernment has done a lot to improve sanitation espescially the TSC has seemed to be succesfull.
But sanitation in urban areas hasn't made that progress as the rural part made in the last time.

In 2008 the government of India launched the NUSP (National urban sanitation policy) to tackle the problem in the towns and cities of India.
In this report they declare that they will support their cities and states to put up City-wide sanitation plans and economic plans to improve sanitation in cities.
But drawing-up and implementation of the plans is the matter of the single states, cities, towns and local bodies.
Now, I'm interessed how much effort does this single states and cities make and which success has been achieved up to know.


I know that the GIZ is supporting CSP's in India. I would be interessed if somebody could tell me more how good does they work, what sort of faults were made, which are the difficulties and if it's a major step forward regarding to sanitation improvement in urban India.

In additional I'm also searching actual examples of sanitation projects in cities which have shown success and are good examples for possible solutions.

Kind regards
Leon

(note by moderator: I have moved Leon's post to the same thread as the older post by Moritz as they fit well together).

Dear Leon,

Thank you for your interest in our work and your well-informed inquiry.

GIZ has supported six cities in their efforts of preparing CSPs under the NUSP. As far as I am informed, it is too early to judge this policy in terms of success or failure. The CSPs have only been finalized and approved in the past few months and the implementation phase is starting in some pilot projects (see post by Moritz above).

Generally speaking, CSPs are an improvement for four reasons. First, they draw attention to a topic which has been neglected for a long time. CSPs also include campaigns for awareness generation, both among the people and the local government officials. Further, through the formation of so-called City Task Forces, relevant stakeholders are integrated in the process, supporting dialogue among public and private actors. Second, CSPs include comprehensive data collection and situation analyses. Data availability is often a problem in itself. Thus, the collation of all available secondary data together with primary data collection on the household level is very useful on its own. Third, urban sanitation needs to be addressed holistically. CSPs not only consider technical options for sewerage and access to toilets. They also look at institutional, financial, governance and inclusiveness aspects. Apart from the core sectors, interlinkages with solid waste management, waste water management and water supply are considered as well. Finally, CSPs are owned by the local governments. Through the participatory process and the primary data collection, they can - at least in theory - be more demand-responsive and sensitive to the local needs and conditions within different cities. Local ownership further increases the chance of successful implementation.

No doubt, there are also potential pitfalls. First, the NUSP is policy document with no money for implementation attached. Thus funding has to be generated through other sources. However, India has several government schemes which offer considerable resources for urban development, JNNURM being the biggest. Second, action plans developed under the CSPs are very long-term, up to 30 years (although they also include immediate and short-term actions). It is unclear to me whether the incentives actually exist for cities to implement such long-term plans. Third, whether or not the CSP process is successful is to a considerable part dependent on the political will of the local government, especially the Municipal Commissioner. This factor is obviously very difficult to influence externally.

We are currently in the process of compiling a Manual for CSPs to support other Indian cities based on our experiences in the six pilot cities.

However, the above rather reflects my personal view on the topic. Hope it helps.

Best
Christian

For my A-level work "sanitation crises in India" I have chosen the CSP for Raipur as an example for what can be done to improve sanitation in urban areas. I know that the GIZ is involved in the development and implementation of this plan.
Now I'ld like to ask if someone could tell me a little bit about this plan and the situation in Raipur and its surroundings. What I know about ist are the Executive Summary and Sector specific Strategies of the plan. In this documents the main problems of sanitation in the city are discribed and solutions are proposed. For me this documents are difficult to understand, because of lots of abbreviations and technical terms and I have difficulties in imagining what is being done now. Moreover the stakeholders and their responsibilities aren't described very well in this files and for me it would be helpfull if I would know accurately which groups are involved in this plan, who does which job, how does cooporation work and who pays for it.
What I don't understand too, is the institutional framework of the Municipal Corporation of Raipur and the structure of the Indian institutions in general. I can't imagine for what the different gouvernment organisations are responsible in the process of implementing and financing the city sanitation plan.
Furthermore I would be interested in the project history. What has been done up to now and what is going to happen?

In addition to this I'm searching an actual report, in which the situation of inhabitants of an urban area in India, optimally in Raipur itself or a nearby city/cities, is discribed. I'm looking for concrete examples for the situation of sanitation in which slum dwellers or people of poor urban areas have to live. Interviews or surveys from households would be very interesting for me, that would make the subject a little bit concreter than raw numbers.

I know that I have posed a lot of questions, but I hope that somebody in the susana community can answer at least some of them.

Thanks a lot Leon

Dear Leon,
I know that my GIZ colleagues work on City Sanitation Plans as well as GIZ International Services. You can find some useful information on www.indiawaterportal.org/taxonomy/term/7720 . I do not have any contacts at the moment, but just contacted somebody about it.

Cheers
Christian

Dear Leon,
In my role as moderator: I have moved your posting so that instead of being a new topic, it follows on from your previous postings on the same topic (which is always better). Did you see the answers which Christian Vosseler from GIZ India had written to you earlier (please scrol up)? I am just asking because you are not referring to his posting in your new posting. Let's see if he or someone else can give you information about Raipur.

Wow, I am impressed how deeply you are getting into this topic even though it is only your A-level at high school! Is that normal? Well done! What will you study afterwards?

Regards,
Elisabeth

Dear Elisabeth,

Yes, I've seen the answer from Christian Vosseler. I'm sorry that I've not mentioned his posting, I've not yet much experience concerning forums and how to act in these communities.

Thanks for the compliment

Kind regards
Leon

Dear all,

Thank you for your comments and sorry for the delay of my response.

@Rahul: You are right, the vast population growth in Raipur is mainly due to the fact that it became the state capital of Chhattisgarh.

@Leon: Thank for your well informed enquiry. As Elisabeth already mentioned, it is impressive how much effort you invest in your work. Good on you.

I am more than happy to explain you the history and future of the CSP in Raipur and the subsequent documents. However in such complex systems questions mostly do not have quick and easy answers. I had to deal with most of your questions recently. Please contact me directly at moritz dot gold at giz dot de. I will find out which documents I can share with you. The status of the sanitation and sanitation-related facilities (like solid waste infrastructure) are part of the CSP documents.

For me the most important point is the difference between the development of the CSP documents and the succeeding implementation. As Christian already mentioned the development and the implementation of CSPs is at the end depending on the local political bodies. India has an incredible complex, bureaucratic and often inefficient political system with a countless number of ministries and departments on national, state and city level. Corruption is also playing a big role. Even if cities agree on the implementation of sanitation infrastructure, it could still be blocked by the state level due to political strategies/charades of the different political parties. Municipal Cooperation’s such as Raipur are often understaffed and underlie high fluctuations. Therefore the best CSP is not a guarantee for the development of sanitation infrastructure. In Raipur for example main stakeholders have not studied the CSP documents. GIZ has so called Environmental Cells (one person) within the Municipal Cooperation’s of the CSP cities. They generally have their offices within the municipal cooperation and deal with the ground reality and are essential for both the preparation and implementation of CSPs.

The CSP of Raipur prepared by local partners (Alchemy Bangalore, CDD Bangalore, CEPT Ahmedabad, CARDS Raipur) under supervision of GIZ was handed over to the city of Raipur. As mentioned above, GIZ together with the local partner Consortium for DEWATS Dissemination Society (www.cddindia.org) is preparing a Detailed Project Report for a decentralized treatment facility as a kick-off of the CSP implementation. In Raipur, this project is in the vicinity of urban waterbodies and should be a pilot for similar boundary conditions (Raipur has more than 50 urban waterbodies). However in the end (the handing over of the DPR), the implementation of the pilot lies in the hands of the Raipur Municipal Cooperation. I am not familiar with all steps taken by the Raipur Municipal Cooperation towards the implementation of the CSP.

@all: The data collection of the pilot project in Raipur made some good process recently. In the middle of June a household survey to identify the mode of water supply and the subsequent consumption, solid waste disposal mechanisms, sanitation facilities and the use of septic tanks was accomplished for the catchment with approximately 750 people. Residents were incredibly cooperative during the survey.
The urban waterbody and drains of interest were sampled for major biochemical and microbilogical parameters. Moreover weirs were used to identify the discharge of untreated wastewater entering and bypassing the lake. A main problem while sampling and measuring of the discharge was the abundance of solid waste which most likely affected the accuracy of the results.
After their evaluation this results will be summarized in a status report and form the basis for the development of an adapted decentralized wastewater treatment concept in the vicinity urban waterbodies.

Greetings Moritz

Hi Moritz, All,

this is so encouraging and after watching CNN last couple of nights ago , it was mentioned Child Labour has been autorized in India . That said , many of these kids were laboured and lot of politics setbacks though but SANITATION was not taken care of meaning it is a point to address.

In cohesion with the main point of discussion , I equally feel that CDD India can use Sanitation as a tool to reinforce youth capacity building because with out Water , Clean Environment as a whole nothing can be possible because :

-it shall cause a lot of diseases and increase death rate
-at a global level the work force shall drastically drop as well.

So this comes in a sense of recommendation , we at SuSanA , have the potentials and tools to ensure for a Sustainable Future due to our main goal and objectives .


Once more keep doing the good job .

Regards,

Divine

Hey all,

I think that I have now enough informations about the CSP from Raipur for my A-level work and in addition I could contact Moritz who could help me a lot too. (Thank you Moritz).
What I haven't done so far, is to get in touch with a person which takes part in the CSP of Raipur.
If there is somebody who currently works or has worked at the CSP in Raipur, I would be interested in his opinion and his thoughts about the CSP.

Kind Regards
Leon

I'm unsure reagarding the importance of the NUSP. What changed with its launch in 2008 in Indias sanitation policy and what's its significance?

I hope somebody can help me.

Kind Regards
Leon