Urban Sanitation

This handbook by Central Water Commission aims to provide necessary guidance to the field engineers in the state and central for design, appraisal, construction and monitoring of the flood management works covering all the relevant BIS codes, design manuals, guidelines, technical specifications for construction materials and practices etc. to meet new challenges in the flood management in India.

This document by Ministry of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation provides guidelines for the low cost sanitation scheme. The main objective of the scheme is to convert the existing dry latrines into low cost flush latrines and to construct new ones.

This article in Economic and Political Weekly,  by analysing various budget documents, attempts to capture the quantum of budgetary outlay for Water and Sanitation Services (WSS) in the slums of Bawana and Bhalaswa in Delhi. Further it captures various systemic weaknesses that impede the effective delivery of WSS in these two slum areas. 

The number people practicing open defecation in India is more than 600 million. Though the access to improved sanitation has increased since 2000 the pace of change has been slow. If the current trend continues then it will be difficult for the country to meet its Millenium Development Goal for sanitation. Thus accelerating access to and use of toilets and hygiene practices have become a national priority.

The report draws on the report by Water and Sanitation Program (WSP) study from 2008 which made a comparative analysis of 23 urban local bodies (ULBs)—looking at seven cities in detail and another 16 based on secondary data to understand the factors affecting cost recovery.

Industrial effluents and sewage water are being diverted to the river Ganga by the cities and towns through which it passes. Nestled on the banks of Ganga, Kanpur, a highly urbanized and industrial city is polluting it most. Apart from the Government of India’s recently constituted National Ganga River Basin Authority, civil societies and NGOs too are putting rigorous efforts to make Ganga pollution free. Though the city has several big and small industries, the leather industries located in Jajmau, the oldest part of the city add to the problem of pollution in the river to a large extent.