Water and sanitation
Sanitation is the concept to restore basic hygiene and health of the people of a country. The country like India over burdened of population more than 50% of which is too poor to avail basic needs of day to day life, for them hygiene is an unimportant issue, hence sanitation is also a luxury. In India 72.2% population live in villages where the awareness of sanitation is much lower than the urban areas.
It was only in the early eighties, with the thrust of the International Water and Sanitation Decade, that India’s first nationwide programme for rural sanitation, the Central Rural Sanitation Programme (CRSP), was launched in 1986 in the Ministry of Rural Development with the objective of improving the quality of life of rural people and to provide privacy and dignity to women. It was supply driven, highly subsidized, and gave emphasis on a single construction model.
Despite the massive outlays for sanitation the Programme led to only a marginal increase in the rural sanitation coverage, with average annual increase in the rural sanitation coverage of only 1 percent. This was because there was total lack of community participation in this traditional, supply driven, subsidy oriented, government programme. There was poor utilization of whatever toilets were constructed under the Programme due to many reasons in which lack of awareness, absence of participation of beneficiaries were most important.
In West Bengal the concept of latrine is well established within rural population through Total Sanitation Campaign by the Govt. As an out come open defecation has been controlled to some extent but the success only restricted upto creation of infrastructure of low cost latrine. The inadequacy of wash water and poor knowledge of sanitation hardly make it useful. On the other hand poor knowledge in safe drinking water has worsened the problem of water borne diseases manifold in rural areas. Though open defecation has been stopped poor sanitation system and
It was only in the early eighties, with the thrust of the International Water and Sanitation Decade, that India’s first nationwide programme for rural sanitation, the Central Rural Sanitation Programme (CRSP), was launched in 1986 in the Ministry of Rural Development with the objective of improving the quality of life of rural people and to provide privacy and dignity to women. It was supply driven, highly subsidized, and gave emphasis on a single construction model.
Despite the massive outlays for sanitation the Programme led to only a marginal increase in the rural sanitation coverage, with average annual increase in the rural sanitation coverage of only 1 percent. This was because there was total lack of community participation in this traditional, supply driven, subsidy oriented, government programme. There was poor utilization of whatever toilets were constructed under the Programme due to many reasons in which lack of awareness, absence of participation of beneficiaries were most important.
In West Bengal the concept of latrine is well established within rural population through Total Sanitation Campaign by the Govt. As an out come open defecation has been controlled to some extent but the success only restricted upto creation of infrastructure of low cost latrine. The inadequacy of wash water and poor knowledge of sanitation hardly make it useful. On the other hand poor knowledge in safe drinking water has worsened the problem of water borne diseases manifold in rural areas. Though open defecation has been stopped poor sanitation system and