Dear Ccleuthi.
My well wishes for your pursuing PhD.
Pl feel free to discuss, certain aspects with my resources also.
Will try to do justice in providing you E, S and G concepts wherever possible.
My email ID is
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Pl feel free to be in touch,
Will join up with Ar. Paresh Sir also..

Well wishes 
Prof Ajit Seshadri 
Vels University Chennai 

Hi Paresh,

Sorry for my late reply - I suggest we set up a skype or zoom meeting this Friday to discuss in more depth!
Here is my link:
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Thank you Prof. Luthi for pointing out this useful set of papers. I've already referred to a few in the paper I shared earlier in this thread.

I am getting to like the sanitation city-scape framework as it helps put sanitation in perspective from demand and supply sides. I am curious to know if you agree with this view? 


Also wondering if you'd agree with the authors about leaving out 'socio-cultural acceptance' from the enabling environment framework introduced by CLUES and used in a few studies by Sandec? 

Regards
paresh

Hi Ajit,

Great stuff. If you haven't seen this yet, some recent papers covering various aspects o CWIS, including FSM here:
www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/9491...ainability-challenge

Cheers Christoph

Dear Ar Paresh and Susana Members, 

Nice creditable work on FSM SWM FSD have been done.
I offer my appreciation in realising fruitful returns to communities as sustained outputs and realising SDGs insitu, in the project.

Our well wishes 
Ajit Seshadri 

Hello folks!!
Happy to share a  link  to our publication based on the process of preparing an SFD of Alleppey. The paper is titled Refining the shit flow diagram using the capacity-building approach – Method and demonstration in a south Indian town and is published in the Journal of Environmental Management by Elsevier. I had submitted this for the special issue on FSM as announced by FSMA  here

This paper builds on an earlier publication by my supervisor and co-author for this paper. We make the following two arguments here:

1. The capacity-building approach (introduced in the earlier paper), that is, to engage local college students and civil society, is a cost-effective way to overcome the two challenges of lack of data and lack of capacity at the local level. We demonstrate how the approach can be employed to collect the required data. Subsequent batches going through such exercise, we argue, will build local capacity in the long term and also make the local government more accountable.
2. The SFD needs to be refined and the output contextually adapted. We demonstrate how it can be done using the data collected by employing the capacity-building approach. The data was collected by 150+ university students, participants of a summer school we organised. 

Critical comments and feedback are welcome. If you prefer, you could also reply to my twitter thread   

Copying the abstract below for your easy perusal. Till the 1^st of August, the publication is openly accessible here:  authors.elsevier.com/a/1dE0H14Z6thOIR

Regards
paresh

Abstract:
In cities of the Global South, faecal sludge management (FSM) has arisen as an acceptable and economical alternative for managing excreta. Shit flow diagram (SFD) has emerged as the preferred tool for the planning and advocacy of FSM services. Besides context-specific challenges, FSM planning, especially the use of SFD is impeded by the lack of data related to on-site sanitation systems (OSSs) and lack of capacity at the local level. This paper sets out to demonstrate how the capacity-building approach can be extended to overcome these two challenges in planning FSM with a substantial share of the information collected through household surveys. We argue that even the resource-constrained towns in the Global South have access to college students, smartphones and open source applications and demonstrate how they can be harnessed to collect the data in a cost-effective manner. Using the data collected by 150+ university students, participants of a summer school, we prepare a SFD for Alleppey, a town in Kerala, India. We argue such repeated exercises by subsequent batches of students can help understand local problems, arrive at context-specific solutions and monitor them to instil better accountability of local governments. We also identify two issues with the current SFD preparation process and find it is necessary to contextualise the output of the tool to use it for planning. We suggest that the methods demonstrated here be incorporated in future refinements to the SFD tool to make it more useful for planning city-wide FSM services. 

Dear Kene,
Thank you for your kind words. Glad that you find my work interesting. I shall keep posting updates here. 
That is an interesting transition you mention. I know of some professionals who transitioned from drinking water supply to sanitation (mostly due to a shift in focus). I am curious to know more about sanitation related work at your department. 

Regards
paresh

Dear Paresh,

Great to hear about the great work you started in 2016 to study the FSM services in small towns in India 🇮🇳. Your study is very interesting and the methodology you chose is very appropriate for a topic that is not widely researched. I believe your findings will help to improve Sanitation planning in India especially the FSM. I am interested in your work and would like to follow your research to learn from the India experience. We have just assumed the responsibility of Sanitation management in our Department to transform from water resources management to the Department of Water & Sanitation.

Thanks Dorothee for responding. 

I am looking at enabling environment from the perspective of provision of services, and lack of treatment facilities tends to be the bottleneck in many towns. I know for certain that lack of land where treatment facilities can be easily located (many reasons can impede identification of such a land parcel) has been one of the reasons that has delayed construction of  treatment plants and hence provision of services itself. The CPHEEO manual (considered as their holy Grail by Engineers in India) also considers land (along with capital) as a key factor that determines selection of treatment technology. It is for these reasons and my training in urban planning that I tend to think physical characteristics should be an attribute. 

What I meant by knowledge management was limited to the process through which local stakeholders learn about new ways of service provision or new technologies. They can be through institutional arrangements already in place or through an individual's exploration or because of a private vendor interested in expansion, etc. In this sense, I agree that skills and capacity subsumes knowledge management. 

I am now better informed and hence in a better position to distinguish between the context and the case. As I mentioned earlier, decisions taken by local governments in small towns are often influenced by experience of large cities. They are also contingent on decisions of state (provincial) government which may also be influenced by experience of larger cities. It is in this context that I was finding it difficult to define the case. As you mention, some components of the enabling environment are common for all cities, large or small within a state (province) and that also needs to be clearly distinguished.

Thanks again for responding. Your comments (and your paper ) have been very helpful.  

Regards
paresh

Dear Paresh

Thank you for sharing some of the results from your work and the case in Allepey.
You asked three questions and I will try to react on those.

1. Is ‘physical characteristics’ (population density, un/availability of land, regional settings) also an attribute that needs consideration?

First I would need to understand, how you define "Attribute". Looking at the term from a decision analysis perspective, it would mean that you use this attribute to measure the overall criteria if an "enabling environment" is given? Then I believe that the 'physical characteristics can or cannot be considered for the enabling environment (e.g. if they are very difficult this makes the implementation more difficult". but personally, I tend to think that physical conditions should be considered when identifying appropriate sanitation technology and system options as part of step 5 of CLUES and it should be the task of the engineering consultants with participation of the stakeholders to identify what are the conditions (not only physical, but also managerial, technical, etc.) conditions that define what criteria define wheather a given technical solution would be appropriate or not.

2. Is knowledge management included in the factor 'skills and capacity'?

Again, I would need to better understand what you mean with "knowledge management". In line with your previous question, I guess you mean that information is made effectively available on different technical and management solutions and  and when they might should be considered or not? If yes, it would go under "skills and capacity".

3. Defining/limiting the ‘case’ in a multi-level governance framework.  Particularly in a context where experience of nearby towns/capital city (in my other case study) also influences decisions made by smaller ULBs

I am not sure what the question is. But it might be possible to analyse what strategies exist in similar context to overcome the hindering aspects in your analysis of the enabling environment, especially regarding institutional arrangements, legal and regulatory framework, and skills and capacities.

Hope my reflections helps you somehow!
Dorothee

Dear All,
Sharing the abstract and presentation of a work in progress paper based on my first case study  of Alleppey, Kerala. I recently presented this at a conference and currently  writing this paper with my supervisor Prof N C Narayanan. A short description below.

This is a qualitative study to understand the challenges faced by local governments in planning and implementing city-wide FSM services. Besides analysing documents like legislation, State Sanitation Strategy, government orders, local government plans, we use semi-structured interviews of officials at the local government and with various state government agencies. We used the enabling environment framework (first proposed by Luthi, Morel, et al 2011 through CLUES guidelines) to analyse the same. We found that all the six factors that constitute enabling environment  to be atleast partially facilitative (see table below) and the ULB officials are aware of ways to overcome the inadequacies. Lack of support by the local leadership is the single barrier in installing sanitary infrastructure.  We find other factors also at work in the process, viz; (lack of) external support, (lack of) knowledge management and vested interests and therefore call for expansion of the enabling environment framework itself.



A few questions that I continue to have are:

1. Is ‘physical characteristics’ (population density, un/availability of land, regional settings) also an attribute that needs consideration?
2. Is knowledge management included in the factor 'skills and capacity'?
3. Defining/limiting the ‘case’ in a multi-level governance framework.  Particularly in a context where experience of nearby towns/capital city (in my other case study) also influences decisions made by smaller ULBs

Critique and feedback is welcome. 

Regards
paresh

Details:
Title: Enabling Provision of faecal sludge management services in small towns: A case of Alleppey, Kerala
Authors: Chhajed-Picha Paresh, Narayanan N C
Presented at: 1st International Conference of Urban Science and Engineering on 29th Feb 2020 included in the book of abstracts (ISBN - 9789389063912)
Organised by: Centre for Urban Science and Engineering (CUSE) at IIT-B.

PS: I also presented a version of this at CEPT Research Symposium 2020 at CEPT University, Ahmedabad.

Hi Paresh,

Thanks a lot for the tips, I will do so. Good luck with your research!