Rural Sanitation

The Central Rural Sanitation Programme, which was started in 1986, was one of India’s first efforts to provide safe sanitation in rural areas. This programme focussed mainly on providing subsidies to people to construct sanitation facilities. However, a study done by the government in 1996-97 showed that it was more important to raise awareness about sanitation as a whole rather than to just provide subsidies for construction. This understanding marked the first shift in the programme. In 1999, a restructured Total Sanitation Campaign (TSC) was initiated to create supply-led sanitation by promoting local sanitary marts and a range of technological options.

The rural sanitation campaign has the following as its objectives:

  • Accelerate sanitation coverage in rural areas.
  • Generate a push from the people to get facilities rather than expect the Government to do it (demand-led promotion).
  • Focus on intensive education and awareness campaigns to ensure that people understand the need for safe sanitation.
  • Take the scheme beyond rural households to rural schools and nursery schools. Here again, the emphasis was placed on promoting good hygiene practices.
  • Promote cost-effective and appropriate technologies.
  • Through all the above, improve the health and quality of life in rural areas.

The last modification of the scheme happened in 2012. It was restructured and renamed as the Nirmal Bharat Abhiyan. With an intent to transform India to "Nirmal Bharat", the scheme's revised target for reaching total sanitation was changed from 2012 to 2022. 

Understanding rural sanitation dataState of rural sanitation in India - Progress and performance - Data visualisation tool by Arghyam

The Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation publishes data related to the rural sanitation scheme on its website. The State of Sanitation Project is an effort to create simple tools that will demystify large datasets and also compare it to other relevant datasets.

View the State of sanitation in India - Data visualisation tool.

From outlays to outcomes: understanding the status of rural sanitation data

The census 2011 data on rural sanitation coverage was a reality check to the existing understanding that the government’s efforts at rural sanitation were moving rapidly towards achieving universal coverage. 

Below are some key lessons that emerged:

  • A difference in the total number of rural households as counted by the census 2011 and the government scheme – while in 2001, the difference was 0.14 lakhs, in 2011, the difference had grown to 884.03 lakhs.
  • A huge difference in the number of rural households with toilets. According to census 2011 data, only 30.7% of rural households had access to toilets in 2011. According to rural sanitation scheme data the number was considerably larger at 79.9%.

Some of these differences can be accounted for by the fact that the sanitation scheme achievement number was calculated on household numbers that were lesser than the 2011 household number. When corrected for this, the total achievement fell to 65.7 percent, which was still significantly higher than the number reported by the census 2011.

Based on these calculations India will have to spend anywhere between 9 – 19 times of its expenditure up to 2011 (Rs. 6140 crore) in order to achieve universal coverage of household toilets – which is just one component of the government scheme.

Download and read the entire study: From outlays to outcomes - The state of rural sanitation data in India - A report by Accountability Initiative and Arghyam (2013).

Download rural sanitation fact sheets for all states of India.

Accountability Initiative, Centre for Policy Research carried out the research for the State of Sanitation Project. Arghyam supported the effort.

About the State of Sanitation Project

The goal of the State of Sanitation project is to understand the success of the government’s rural sanitation scheme from the lenses of coverage, equity, accountability, efficiency and health.State of Sanitation

Open defecation in rural India remains a problem that perplexes policy makers and civil society alike. India has the largest number of people who practice open defecation (626 million) and the most number of child deaths due to poor water, sanitation and hygiene conditions compared to the rest of the world.

While access to toilets is by itself an important aspect that needs to be understood, it is not enough to reach the goal of total sanitation. Indeed, India’s rural sanitation scheme which was devised in 1986 and restructured in 2012 as the Nirmal Bharat Abhiyan (NBA) acknowledges this. Its goal is not only universal toilet coverage by 2022, but also improving health and providing privacy and dignity to women, with the overall goal of improving the quality of life of people living in rural areas.

Aims of the State of Sanitation project: Multiple agencies have assessed the status of the rural sanitation programme and have quantified its benefits over time. However, there have been few attempts to provide an online, concurrent monitoring mechanism to track the status of both the implementation of the scheme and the larger benefits from the scheme.

To this end, the project will:The State of Sanitation Project is supported and run by Arghyam

  • Design monitoring tools – this will include:
      • Online tools that help demystify government data and provide overlays between multiple data sets relevant to sanitation. These tools will be opened up to civil society and provide context to the large data sets.
      • Participatory assessment tools that will attempt to qualify how the scheme is working and issues in implementation, usage and achievement of the rural sanitation scheme’s goals.
  • Identify best practices and gaps in implementation – this will include:
      • Ground verification of best practices and issues.
      • Focussed efforts to document good practices and problems.

For more queries or feedback, please contact us.

Featured Articles
December 13, 2022 WaterAid India’s partnership with USAID and Gap Inc. benefits 2400 villages across 7 districts of Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra

WaterAid has focused on establishing community-led water quality monitoring & surveillance (Image: Anil Gulati/India Water Portal Flickr)
October 15, 2022 Synthesis of water, sanitation and hygiene (WaSH) spatial pattern in rural India: an integrated interpretation of WaSH practices
People in rural areas lack potable water, and use unsafe sanitation and hygiene facilities (Image: Sebastian Dahl)
October 4, 2021 Lessons from the Swachh Bharat Mission experience
Pop culture icons like Gabbar Singh are painted on the walls of a toilet complex in New Delhi (Image: Project Raahat, Enactus)
May 18, 2021 Income loss top concern for rural communities, says study
Must have protocols for timely action and outreach in times of need (Image: DMD, Government of Bihar)
May 11, 2021 Bathing spaces and not toilets alone, aid women in maintaining health and hygiene. It is time the Swachh Bharat Mission pays attention to bathing spaces as well!
A temperory bathing space with no water and privacy in a fishing village in Tamil Nadu (Image Source: India Water Portal)
Positive correlation between higher levels of education for women and toilet use
A study found that toilet use was higher in households that had a high standard of living, higher educational levels among women and that were located in urban areas. Posted on 21 Apr, 2016 10:07 AM

India continues to have the highest number of people defecating out in the open according to recent figures by the World Health Organisation

Toilet use in India (Source: Sourabh Phadke)
School toilet construction slows down across the country compared to last year
Posted on 18 Apr, 2016 10:55 AM
8,240 school toilets and 1,337 Anganwadi toilets constructed in 2015-16: Swachhta Status Report 2016
The latest edition of the Swachhta Status Report brought out by the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) has revealed that the
Low cost napkins: Are they a band aid in the absence of sanitation facilities?
Low-cost sanitary napkins can start a revolution, but only when factors like access to toilet, clean water, privacy for changing and sustainable disposal of used products is considered. Posted on 15 Apr, 2016 05:24 PM

Menstrual hygiene management continues to be a challenge for rural women in India and many women are forced to resort to unhygienic ways of managing menstruation thus affecting their health and well-being. The paper titled 'Menstrual management and low cost sanitary napkins' published in the Economic and

Women, menstrual management and sanitation (Source: India Water Portal)
Deepor Beel now houses most of Guwahati's garbage
Posted on 04 Apr, 2016 10:30 AM
Most of Guwahati's garbage ends up at the city's permanent freshwater lake, the Deepor Beel
Toilet subsidy is not the answer to sanitation problems
Posted on 31 Mar, 2016 06:30 PM
In recent years, especially after the launch of major programmes like Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, sanitation has become a hotly debated topic in India. Crores of rupees have gone into building toilets but they remain unused, villages that were declared open defecation free (ODF) are unable to sustain that, and sewage treatment continues to be a big challenge.
Is Budget 2016 all about ‘Swachh Bharat’ and a rustic touch?
Experts opine on whether the water and sanitation sector got a meaningful budget push this year. Posted on 07 Mar, 2016 12:28 PM

Is this year’s budget a mere continuation of the trajectory set last year in social sectors like drinking water, sanitation, employment guarantee and agriculture? Is the budgetary outlay for urban development responsive towards the drinking water and sanitation needs of vulnerable sections of society such as the urban poor and women? Does the budget hold appeal for India's rural poor?

Drinking water source in a village at Kawardha, Chhattisgarh
Swachh Bharat Abhiyan receives an allocation of Rs 9,000 crore in the 2016-17 Budget
Posted on 06 Mar, 2016 11:38 PM
Centre allocates Rs 9,000 crore for the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan in the 2016-17 Budget
The Union government has allocated Rs 9,000 crore for the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan to improve sanitation and cleanliness across the country.The campaign, one of P
Toilets can work!
This study provides first time evidence that the provision of hygienic latrines and piped water supply in rural villages can lead to significant reduction in the spread of diarrhoeal diseases. Posted on 27 Feb, 2016 02:20 PM

Open defecation continues to be practised by as high as 65% of India's rural population and only 14% of rural households have access to piped water supply leading to high rates of infant deaths and mortality. This working paper titled 'Toilets can work: Short and medium run

Hygienic latrines and diarrhoea (Source: Sourabh Phadke)
Mysuru is India's cleanest city, again
Posted on 22 Feb, 2016 09:32 AM
Swachh Sarvekshan results revealed: Mysuru is India's cleanest city, again
The Swachh Survekshan that set out to assess the cleanliness and hygiene levels in cities across India has declared
×