With experiences in the Sanitation sector, most of us must have come across numerous good practices, however in form of isolated islands of success. The compelling reasons for this could be:
1. Conventional ways of capturing
2. No set dissemination strategy
3. Limited or no thought behind scaling up the successful initiatives that eventually leads to phasing out.
4. No recognition or appreciation

In order to translate the working models and approaches, we should create a more manageable and user friendly interface for the masses. For achieving this, we need to recognize and appreciate the voices of change on the ground and motivate others to join the movement. What is challenging is to also encourage horizontal learning and sharing rather than just vertical learning.
At India Sanitation Coalition , we aim at creating a dynamic portal to encourage a bottoms- up approach for capturing knowledge and developing the much needed connect for experiential sharing.

Documenting, organising and sharing case studies or good practices has been the weakest link in most development activities, and WASH is no exception. As a result we end up repeating mistakes and miss duplicating successes. The few initiatives and networks working in this area have fragile institutional memories and certainly no systematic way to access or distribute their experiences. This activity remains peripheral instead of being mission critical.

The new commitments and drives under the SBM provide an opportunity to continuously learn from past and present governmental and non-governmental efforts to find out “what works and what does not”. Such learning could be possible only cross learning and sharing.

SBM since its launch has seen different people and institutions’ willingness to contribute and try out new and innovative methods. We have been seeing an array of new and interesting approaches by different government institutions, people’s institutions, committed individuals, NGOs and corporates. One of the most important initiatives advised in SBM is setting up of Rapid Action and Learning Units (RALU) at national, state and district levels. These units are supposed to act as catalysts for facilitating cross learning and sharing especially focussing on what works and what does not work.

Operationalising RALUs has been one of the biggest challenges and various discussions on modalities of taking it forward has taken place. Recently the Government of India felicitated 25 district magistrates from 20 states for scaling up sanitation access in their respective districts. I am sure that these 25 districts can contribute different approaches and strategy for remaining districts in the country. A process documentation of these 25 district WASH champions will be of great help.

Some of the potential best practises related documentation that could be taken up are:
Motivators Model to accelerate Sanitation in Rural India: Nirmal Bharat Abhiyan introduced swachchta doots as motivators for accelerate demand for sanitation facilities in rural India. However due to poor selection, lack of effective training, weak implementation and inefficient monitoring machanisms swachchta doots did not contribute to the set objectives. However during the Swachch Bharat Mission, CLTS-trained motivators are doing commendable work in many districts in India. One such example is from the Mugeli District of Chhattisgarh.

Providing Incentives to beneficiaries is a reality. Some districts have taken steps for faster disbursement of incentives. This has further motivated to speed up sanitation acceleration in many districts. However in some state disbursement of incentive is one of the major hurdles to achieve universal access. Documenting some of these experience will surely help further.

One of the major hurdles for sanitation acceleration in the country is myths about sanitation technology. Due to over exposure to urban areas, people in rural areas are opting for septic tanks than leach pit models. Successful implementation of leach pit models will help to improve sanitation coverage

ODF on Paper… ODF by distributing incentives… data on online and offline are different… is ODF going NGP way? Course correction is necessary for universal access. Is it an institutional failure? While travelling from Sawai Madhopur to Gangapur, we stopped on the wayside to drink a cup of tea. I asked the teawallah, whether he has toilet at home. He told me that he has one toilet but received incentives for 5 toilets. He told me that few months ago team came to distribute incentives and made the village ODF. I asked the people who gathered in the tea shop the meaning of ODF. None of them gave the answer. I asked them who declared their Panchayat ODF. They told me it is on paper. 50% of the people have toilets, and among them, 50% use them. ODF is going NGP way.. Need reflection and mid way course correction.

I had visited the Mandya district of Karnataka last year and wrote a document on it. An interesting model of how the CEO of the district had mobilised all departments, politicians, religious leaders, etc., to run the sanitation campaign in mission mode, as she called it. In less than a year it doubled the district's sanitation coverage. Monitoring was by the NREGA staff. She planned another mission on toilet usage and hygiene shortly after the construction. The model was recognised the then ACS for Rural Development who encouraged other districts to take up the Mandya Model.

The document is attached.

Potential topics for case studies.

1. Recently government of India felicitated 25 districts magistrates from 20 states for scaling up sanitation access in their respective districts . I am sure that these 25 districts can contribute different approaches and strategy for remaining districts in the country. Process documentation of these 25 district WASH Champions will be of great help.
2. Motivators Model to accelerate Sanitation in Rural India: Nirmal Bharat Abhiyan introduced swachchta doots as motivators for accelerate demand for sanitation facilities in rural India. However due to poor selection, lack of effective training, weak implementation and inefficient monitoring machanisms swachchta doots did not contribute to the set objectives. However during the Swachch Bharat Mission, CLTS trained motivators doing commendable work in many districts in India. One such example is from Mugeli districts of Chhattisgarh.
3. Providing Incentive to the beneficiaries is a reality. Some districts have taken steps to faster disbursement of incentives. This has further motivated to speed up sanitation acceleration in many districts. However in some state disbursement of incentive is one of the major hurdles to achieve universal access. Documenting some of these experience will surely help further.
4. One of the major hurdles for sanitation acceleration in the country is myths about sanitation technology. Due to over exposure to urban areas, people in rural areas are opting for septic tanks than leach pit models. Successful implementation of leach pit models will help to improve sanitation coverage

Dear Members,
Good Practices are really encouraging but it back fires when best practices are challenged.The best case is of Rajasthan which is number one state in toilet construction.All international organizations have preapred best practices by spending huge portion of their budgets.Please go through link below:-
timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/jaipur/...cleshow/53220835.cms
Best regards,
Abhishek Mendiratta

Dear Sidhhartha/Nitya,

As part of this conversation thread around good practice documentation, would like to share a detailed case study on how CFAR in Jaipur, has ensured that the urban poor get their IHHL under SBM through persistent community engagement processes.

Will be happy to get your responses on the same

Thanks

Shramana Majumder
CFAR

Documenting, organising and sharing case studies or good practices has been the weakest link in most development activities, and WASH is no exception. As a result we end up repeating mistakes and miss duplicating successes. The few initiatives and networks working in this area have fragile institutional memories and certainly no systematic way to access or distribute their experiences. This activity remains peripheral instead of being mission critical.

One of the aims of the India Sanitation Coalition, indiasanitationcoalition.org, is to collect, organise or curate and disseminate these case studies. I hope we can contribute to this activity with quality material on good, bad and indifferent case studies since there are things to be learnt from all of them.

Dear Members,

We are starting the final topic in the Swachh Bharat Mission discussion on good practices. I am Siddhartha Das, Policy Manager for Rural WASH with WaterAid. I am happy to start this discussion on the SuSanA India Forum, supported by the India Sanitation Coalition and Arghyam.

SBM has gained momentum since 2014 due to increased political willingness and sanitation being set as the national priority. Civil society has proactively worked with the system in identifying critical gaps along with suggesting ways to address those. Two of the most critical issues being recurrently identified are post construction behaviour and availability of resources.

The new commitments and drives under the SBM provide an opportunity to continuously learn from past and present governmental and non-governmental efforts to find out “what works and what does not”. Such learning could be possible only cross learning and sharing.

SBM since its launch has seen different people and institutions’ willingness to contribute and try out new and innovative methods. We have been seeing an array of new and interesting approaches by different government institutions, people’s institutions, committed individuals, NGOs and corporates. One of the most important initiatives advised in SBM is setting up of Rapid Action and Learning Units (RALU) at national. State and district levels. These units are supposed to act as catalysts for facilitating cross learning and sharing especially focussing on what works and what does not work. Operationalising RALUs has been one of the biggest challenges and various discussions on modalities of taking it forward has taken place.

WaterAid has set up a state RALU in Andhra Pradesh in collaboration with SSBM and PRIA. The unit established with the purpose of experimenting this new initiative has been running well and is acting as the required dissemination platform in AP. Initiatives are shared through regional and district consultation and upload of case studies in the government website. RALU in AP is now considering setting up of district RALUs to improve cross-learning.

One of the tendencies in the entire development sector as a whole is the inclination to bring out only good practices. It is equally critical for the sector to bring out bad practices as that may contribute to equal amount of learning as emanating out of good practices.

Growing suggestions of better programme design, better technology, strengthening institutions and stronger monitoring is always paramount and important. What is equally important is promoting both good and bad practices and ensuring that it is shared in appropriate platforms.

I invite your comments on the following questions:
1. What are good practice examples of how SBM has effectively contributed to significantly improve sanitation in communities?
2. How can this knowledge be institutionalised rather than remaining anecdotal?

Looking forward to a bagful of ideas

Warm Regards,

Siddhartha Das
Policy Manager: WaterAid

I have attached a document detailing out a project we did for IL&FS CSR in Jambudiyapura Village near Baroda, Gujarat. The project was designed to build bathrooms and toilets for individual houses, collect, transport and treat all domestic wastewaters and sewage. The village gets a maximum of 70 LPCD water supply to complicate matters. To achieve this we combined our Clearford One sewerage system with a CAMUS SBT to create a sustainable O&M model that is cheap as well as easy to operate. Details in the document attached.