Scaling Up Sanitation Coverage in Rural Communities through Business:

A Need for Conceptual Shift

By: Thakur Prasad Bhatta
Freelance Development Researcher
Email: bhatta.thakurprasad@gmail.com
Introductory Background:
In terms of human development Nepal ranks far below in global context. Poverty has been the
most challenging national agenda for the country over decades. Human development and poverty
are closely associated phenomenon. Health of people is one of the basic components to consider
achieving the goal of human development and fighting against poverty. Safe drinking water and
good sanitary facilities play crucial role to improve public health. One of the major causes to the
high rate of children death in Nepal is attributed to the poor access to safe water and sanitation
services .People both in urban and rural area are suffering from various kind of water and
sanitation related diseases which often take the form of epidemic especially in summer and rainy
season as the possibility of contamination of water is high in these seasons. The very high
prevalence rate of diarrhea and dysentery and other water borne diseases owes principally to
the low level of accesses to latrines. Access to latrines, furthermore, and unlike access to
drinking water increased only marginally during 1991-1996(Nepal Human Development Report,
1998: 69)
Compare to access to drinking water the sanitation coverage is very low in rural areas. Besides
other things for the huge gap between drinking water coverage and sanitation coverage are less
emphasis to sanitation compare to drinking water and grant support policy to build the household
latrine of external support agencies. The grant support policy is not helpful to find locally
operating option to scale up the coverage of latrine to improve the sanitation coverage
significantly. As sanitation largely depends on behavioral change of individuals which again is
determined by culture and level of awareness time bound project support from external agencies
can not bring result as to the drinking water project. In fact sanitation improvement requires
continuous efforts over certain years of time period. Local community based mechanism
therefore becomes essential to improve the sanitation in a sustainable way. As sanitation is one
of the basic facilities like shelter, food and clothes to live decent life it can be treated as business
affairs to be operated by demand and supply factors. Because of various factors it may not be
taken perfectly marketable thing in rural communities but it can be promoted through business
approach to large extent at present and fully in future. With out innovative approach in rural
sanitation sector it seems impossible to achieve desirable sanitation coverage in Nepal following
grant oriented approach. This article aims to open the discourse on the local community based
business approach to scale up sanitation coverage in rural Nepal. Considering the vital role of
household latrine to improve the overall sanitation and for the convenience to present the
matters in simple manner this article take latrine coverage as to the sanitation coverage .
Is Hygiene and Sanitation a Business?
Both people living in urban and rural areas will surprise on this question but with contrary views.
The urban people will surprise as it is not any question for them as they are buying H and S
services in their daily life. Obviously hygiene and sanitation services are good business in urban
areas. Significant portion of population are employed in this sector. Residents of urban areas
spend significant amount of their income for the hygiene and sanitation services.
The rural people as well as agencies supporting for hygiene and sanitation services in rural area,
on the other hand, will take it differently. Probably it will be a stunning idea to them. It is
because the approach so far in practice supports sanitation activities in rural area in form of
grants in most cases. This traditional approach undermines the willingness of rural people to pay
for good sanitation facility or service. Good sanitation here refers the disposal of human excreta
in a hygienic way. Household latrine, therefore, can be taken as the main sanitation good/activity
for further discussion.
In economics, any thing that satisfies consumer creates demand. In this sense, latrine is such a
facility which can be traded in the markets. It means there will be both demand and supply sides
of it. Certainly, there is different between urban and rural scenario. In the former, there is already
active market for sanitation while in case of later the demand has to be generated or created. So
there is only difference between the levels and nature of demand in these two cases. Virtually,
there are no reasons to say that sanitation can not be business in rural case. In recent years,
increasing willingness and contribution of households to latrine building in spite of poor
economic status of the communities indicates enough that sanitation can be business in rural area
too. Further increasing use of soap both for cloth and body washing in rural communities also
supports the view that hygiene and sanitation good has market if there is awareness at personal,
household and community level.
Sanitation Coverage: A Big Challenge or Huge Market for Business!
Sanitation coverage is still very low in spite of continue efforts of governmental and non
governmental agencies working in this sector over decades in Nepal. There is wide gap between
the water coverage and sanitation coverage. This reflects the neglecting tendency towards the
sanitation compare to drinking water. In Nepal the water coverage is 48 % while it is only 27 %
in case of sanitation coverage. In rural areas the gap is still higher - the water coverage is 42 %
and the sanitation coverage is 19 % (WaterAid Nepal: 2004).
The low sanitation coverage is not only a challenge but an opportunity to promote sanitation as a
business. Off course, the traditional approach could not solve the problem of low sanitation
coverage. It needs a conceptual shift from the traditional approach of free support to the
approach of sanitation as a business. In conclusion, there is huge potential market in rural areas
for the sanitation promotion.
The Millennium Developments Targets for Nepal in Sanitation Sector
To achieve the Millennium Developments Goals there is a challenge of meeting target of halving
by 2015 the proportion of people without access to hygienic sanitation. To meet the millennium
development targets, in the period of 2000 to 2015, 24,67,349 numbers of latrines should be
constructed in the whole country (WaterAid Nepal: 2004). Achievements of this target will up
sanitation coverage to 56 % in rural areas and 80 % in urban areas. The study projects that to
achieve the sanitation target,
In terms of resources, as of the study's estimation, the requirement to meet the sanitation
Millennium Development Target is $ 163 million. And the estimated resource availability is $ 74
million. Thus the total resource gap for sanitation is $ 89 million and the annual resource gap is $
6 million.
The above picture of sanitation clearly spells that there is a great challenge to meet the MDG in
sanitation sector in terms of both the resources and performance. If Water and Sanitation
agencies continue their traditional way of implementing sanitation activities in grant support
approach it will be impossible to achieve the goals. Hence, it is very urgent to make conceptual
shift in sanitation promotion approach.
Social Mobilization for Sanitation Business Promotion: Coordinated Efforts Needed
Sanitation can be promoted as business if we adopt the private public partnership approach in
this sector. Social mobilization will be the indispensable tools to involve all actors in sanitation
business. In the private public partnership approach each actor will play different roles in order
to achieve the same main goal. NGOs will be involved to create or generate demand for
sanitation through social mobilization and establish linkage with the private suppliers for
materials, village artisans for the technical skills and for the fund to funding agencies
government or non government. In this way there will be involvement of all actors to promote
sanitation donors, NGOs and private sectors. The communities or households who demand for
latrine should contribute their part as per their ability. It means 'ability to pay' principle should be
practiced in the sanitation sector to maintain social justice.
Demand Responsive Service Provider (DRSP) Approach: Important Roles of Users
Committee and Latrine Builders
NGOs engaged in social mobilization to achieve improved sanitation should focus their efforts to
motivate households to build, use and maintain the latrine. In other words they help creating
demand in rural communities for the household latrine. Similarly government and non
governmental organizations may support to develop local latrine builders providing skill training
to rural poor who will use their technical skill to build latrine at demand basis of the households.
The private suppliers will be there to sell and supply construction materials needed for latrine
building when they get indication that there is demand of such materials. Besides these actors,
supporting agencies has been forming and developing Users Committee at community level
which works as Community based Organization (CBO) a voluntary organization to take lead of
community affairs. The role of Users Committees (UC) shall be to link with supporting
organization for drinking water and sanitation project and skill training. They may stimulate
private suppliers to make avail construction materials in the village. Overall the UC play role to
bring harmony among different actors of water and sanitation sector. All of these actors can be
active in promoting sanitation in an interrelated way. This concept can be termed as demand
responsive service provider approach which has come into practice in development sector
recently. For example Helvetas Nepal is applying and trying to establish this approach in various
sectors of development such as water and sanitation, commercial vegetable production and
natural resources management. DRSP approach can be instrumental in sanitation sector to make
it sustainable and self reliance and scale up the sanitation coverage.
For latrine construction, as per the demand responsive approach, households procure technical
skills from the trained local latrine builder (LLB) required to build it. Other local materials and
unskilled labor come from the households themselves in most cases. The trained
LLBs provide skill labors as per the requirements of household owners to build the latrine. The
need of skill labors will vary as per the need of households and type of latrines to be constructed.
Some better off households contract LLB to build the whole latrine while the other relatively
poor households procure LLB's services partly.
If a community aims full sanitation coverage building latrine in all households there will be big
job market for the LLBs which will be in form of selling their technical skills. Sanitation
business in case of rural hills of Nepal is not the selling of any manufactured goods. As discussed
above it is the selling of skilled labor required to build the latrine. In plain area, building cement
rings and slab can be the sanitation business while in hills locally available stone and sand are
collected by the individual households themselves to cast the cement slab and make latrine floor.
On the other hand, they do not have technical skill to build latrine which they buy it from local
latrine builders. Thus, there is demand for technical skill and it is a potential economic activity in
sanitation sector in case of rural hills of Nepal. At present, many local latrine builders are earning
money by selling their skills for latrine building .
In conclusion, sanitation coverage will not be a challenge but a big potential if sanitation is
treated as business in rural areas. However this requires a major shift in approach form
traditional free support to business approach. The demand responsive service provider approach
as well as social mobilization process will be instrumental in scaling up sanitation coverage. This
will also help to meet the scarce resources to achieve millennium development goals in sanitation
sector of Nepal. Without innovative and self reliance strategy it will be highly impossible to
increase the sanitation coverage of Nepal which is yet quite modest in rural communities.
References:
Nepal South Asia Centre.1998. Nepal Human Development Report 1998. Nepal South Asia
Centre, Kathmandu , Nepal.
WaterAid Nepal. 2004. The Water and Sanitation Millennium Development Targets in Nepal:
What do they mean? What will they cost? Can Nepal meet them?. WaterAid Nepal,
Kathmandu.
Various unpublished documents of Helvetas Nepal on Demand Responsive Service Provided
Approach.