How unique business models in effective implementation of fecal sludge and septage management help

India has witnessed unparalleled growth in the sanitation sector in the past few years. The thrust provided by policies like Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM), AMRUT, and the support of persistent collaborative action led by civil society organizations has progressed India into becoming Open Defecation Free in 2019. This achievement was enabled by targeted commitment towards ensuring access for all and engaging the most vulnerable communities.

While access to toilets and strengthening sanitation infrastructure is one part of ensuring safe sanitation systems, the effective treatment and disposal of fecal sludge is the crucial next step. Almost 60% of toilets in India rely on Onsite Sanitation Systems (OSS), with most of the fecal sludge being discharged into water bodies and open fields. Rising urbanization puts further pressure on sanitation infrastructure and safe disposal of waste poses itself as a challenge directly affecting the well-being of communities. Accelerating its commitment towards the safe management of fecal waste, India launched the National Fecal Sludge and Septage Management (FSSM) Policy in 2017. FSSM has since emerged as a low-cost, decentralized, scalable solution to safely and effectively treat and dispose of fecal waste. Over 20 States and Union Territories have already successfully adopted FSSM policies to work towards safe and inclusive sanitation services.

States have identified the key challenges of infrastructure, capacity building, and technology, and leveraged them as opportunities to integrate newer technologies, introduce innovative service and business models, adopt state and local level approaches, private sector intervention models, and community engagement tools to further strengthen FSSM. Many of these services and business models have the potential for replication and scalability across states. The state of Maharashtra has emerged as a frontrunner state in the country to implement sustainable financing models for scaling access to sanitation services.

Providing Sanitation Credit to ensure Access to Individual Household Toilets (IHHTs):

The first part of the sanitation value chain – containment of human waste through increasing coverage of sanitation infrastructure focuses on equitable and inclusive access to IHHTs, Community Toilets and Public Toilets. To achieve city-wide inclusive sanitation and move closer towards achieving SDG 6, it is imperative to increase access to safe sanitation infrastructure for urban poor communities. IHHTs can mitigate critical challenges like lack of privacy and safety, exposure to unhygienic conditions during menstrual cycles, and non-inclusive infrastructure for the differently-abled people. Government officials, public agencies, private bodies and civil society organizations collectively play a crucial role in building and sustaining inclusive infrastructure like IHHTs for the most marginalized communities. Despite urban slums facing space constraints, lacking monetary resources and adequate sewerage access, the state of Maharashtra has implemented the unique Sanitation Credit Model as a solution for financing toilets in urban poor communities.

Piloted in Jalna by the Center for Water and Sanitation (CWAS) in collaboration with Mahila Arthik Vikas Mahamandal (MAVIM), the model successfully leveraged Community Management Resource Centres (CMRC) to mobilize sanitation loans for 260 women by linking Self-Help Groups (SHGs) to scheduled commercial banks. The model also created opportunities for the empowerment of women who had taken complete ownership of their decision to own a toilet, lead its construction and repay the loans. It also enabled collaborative action with public agencies, SHGs, local resources like Community Resource Persons (CRPs) and Sahayoginis, and private players who worked collectively to provide technical support for loan facilitation, toilet construction and monitor timely repayment of loans. The project showed that given affordable sanitation credit, households, and particularly women, could access safe and hygienic sanitation. The sanitation credit model piloted in Jalna, and now being implemented across the state of Maharashtra has the potential to be scaled as a sustainable financing model for urban poor communities.

Ensuring scheduled desludging through PPP with a performance linked annuity model

While access to sanitation facilities is the first essential milestone towards an equitable sanitation ecosystem, the regular emptying and conveyance of human waste is a crucial, yet often undervalued aspect of ensuring a safe and strong sanitation ecosystem. It is therefore referred to as “the missing middle”. Routinely desludging septic tanks is of vital importance towards ensuring the health and well-being of communities and sanitation workers. Currently, the common practice is “demand-based desludging”, which tends to be irregular, may lead to manual scavenging or unsafe desludging practices, and has a negative impact on public health and the environment.

To tackle this challenge, the towns of Wai and Sinnar in Maharashtra implemented scheduled desludging on a three-year cycle as a municipal service, linked to output-based annuity payment for private desludging service providers. The service is inclusive since it covers all properties including slums and urban poor communities and is linked to sanitation tax which is collected as part of property tax payments – ensuring that poor households pay less. As a result of this initiative, Wai completed its first three-year cycle of desludging by serving 6,800+ properties and 3600+ septic tanks with a 95 per cent acceptance rate and Sinnar served 6,500+ properties and 4,300+ septic tanks with acceptance rate of 93 per cent. All the septage has been treated and reused at the FSTP. .

This plan has immense potential to be scaled and replicated across Indian cities, with thrust provided by the recognition of scheduled desludging of septic tanks as a mandatory requirement for ODF++ protocol certification under SBM 2.0 and as part of Swachh Survekshan.

Given India’s diverse topography and vast population, states and cities have been adopting unique approaches that cater to the needs of their communities to ensure sanitation service delivery. These pioneering models developed and successfully implemented in Maharashtra have immense scope for replication and scalability across geographies to enable city-wide inclusive sanitation. The implementation of these models is also a key example of how collaborative action amongst stakeholders has the potential to accelerate India’s progress and positively impact communities. With every emerging challenge, the scope to think, innovate and create widens; it is now an opportune moment for stakeholders to identify these scalable solutions, adapt and action upon them in their cities and states.

Meera Mehta is Executive Director, Centre for Water and Sanitation and Arwa Bharmal is Program Lead, Centre for Water and Sanitation. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely that of the author. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.

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