Rural Water Supply and Sanitation Sector

 1.0 Introduction:

 Water and sanitation have been recognised as the essential needs of  human development and are also part of the Millennium Development Goals. Despite huge investments in the sector by governments and others, many still do not have access to these basic needs.

Similarly despite heavy subsides and targeted interventions in the past, only about 20% of the rural families have access to safe sanitation facilities.  

The major reasons for this situation are:

• Lack of community ownership of the assets created, leading to their failure
• The delivering agencies/ departments are too far from the local people and are not accountable to the people
• Focus was only on creating new assets and not on taking care of the created assets
• Lack in the efforts to make the people realize that sanitation is a behaviour aspect
• Lack of adequate focus on sustainability of natural resources ( about 90% of the RWS depends on ground water resources alone).

Based on the above lessons and the policy of Government of India (GoI) for the Sector Reforms Programmes (SRP), now known as Swjaldhara, the GoM has taken a policy decision to implement key reforms in the sector, beginning in the year 2000. The major reform policies are related to :

• community ownership through appropriate participation and contribution at different stages,
• 100% Operations and Maintenance (O&M) responsibility to the community,
• facilitation role to the State and the Zilla Parishads,
• focus on water resource management for sustainability,
• focus on collective community action for eliminating open defecation in a given habitation, 
• post-achievement incentives and rewards  in place of subsidies.

Since 2000 the GoM has worked hard on propagating the new line of thinking and has been successful in achieving a popular acceptance to the reform principles, all over the state amongst all the stake holders. A World bank funded project titled- Jal Swarajya has also been launched in the year 2003, which is designed to strengthen the implementation of the reform approach all over the state. In the field of rural sanitation the GoM has launched two new and innovative approaches viz: Sant Gadge Baba Sanitation Campaign and Hagandari Mukt Goan Abhiyan (open defecation free village campaign). These two approaches are fully community driven and have achieved high levels of popularity and success. These success stories have reinforced the GoM’s belief that ‘it pays to believe in people’.

Encouraged by the positive reform oriented experiences of the recent years, the GoM has now decided to develop a vision for the sector for the next 20 years i.e till 2025.

2.0 The Vision :

The vision of the Government of Maharashtra is to:

“Empower the rural communities in the state of Maharashtra, especially the poor and the vulnerable sections, to identify, plan and manage their water and sanitation  resources and assets so as to facilitate better access to ‘adequate/appropriate standards’ of service delivery  in a  sustainable,  equitable and just  manner”.

Vision explained:

As per the Constitution of India, the provision of water and service services is the responsibility of State governments and the PRIs. In order to fulfill this responsibility,   Governments have created special institutions viz the Public Health/ Water Supply Boards and have started delivering services to the people in a centralized manner. But it has been observed over this period that the objective of ‘service provision’ has been replaced by the objective of ‘scheme implementation’. This means that schemes are planned by the officers of the government institutions and executed by them without any public consultations and participation. Moreover, many a times the schemes are also maintained by them, either by default or design. This also means that schemes are executed and run by the budget provisions made by the government and not necessarily the demands of the people. In this process the ‘public at large’ have disassociated themselves from caring for the assets created and the locally available resources. Despite huge investments, this process resulted in poor service delivery standards impacting the quality of living of large populations, especially the poor and the vulnerable sections.   If the situation has to be improved it is imperative to bring back the focus to service delivery by enthusing the local population to care for the assets created and available resources through local initiative. Therefore, the GoM aims to develop appropriate processes to ‘empower’ the community to take care of the locally available resources and assets, over a period of next 20 years.

Empowerment: Empowering means that the communities will be encouraged and facilitated to decide on all the matters related to the service delivery in an inclusive and participatory manner through ‘direct democracy’. As per the recent amendments to the Constitution of India , the Gram Sabha (the body of electorate in a Gram Pachayat area) will be the ‘supreme body’ to make all decisions regarding management of assets and local resources. The Government agencies will play a supportive role to this body and assist them on a demand basis.

Service Standards:  The Government hopes that an empowered community will set its own service standards and manage the service delivery to these standards. The GoM will not set the service standards, as is being done now in a centralized manner.  For example, the current norm is that every individual should get atleast 40 LPCD water supply, every family must have an individual household latrine, every school should have a school sanitation complex and so on. Currently the funds are earmarked on this basis and ‘schemes’ are approved accordingly.

But, people live in varying social, economic and geographical regions that impact the  aspirations of service standards. Will the tribal communities in interior regions need the same levels of water supply as compared to the communities living closer to urban settlements? Can the communities in ‘drought prone’ zones afford to take care of assets designed to deliver same levels of water supply as in ‘water rich’ zones? What criteria are used to determine a given technology choice- initial capital cost or the ongoing O&M costs? Do communities in small, medium and large villages need same standards of sanitation services?

The answers to these questions can only be given by the empowered communities. These can not be ‘fixed’ in a centralized manner by the Governments. In fact, the sustainability of the sector visions outlined above depends on ‘finding local and appropriate-cost solutions[1]’.

Sustainability: The most widely accepted definition of sustainability in the world is: “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of the future generations to meet their own needs[2]”. The future in this context is not short term but as long term, may be 25 to 50 years. This definition implies that the citizens should ask for themselves, before undertaking any projects, will my children and grand children be able to plan and have what their minimum needs that they aspire for? Specifically in the RWSS context the question should be –will my children and grand children have enough water resources to lead a quality of life? Will they have environmental friendly conditions to lead a healthy life? Sustainability also implies that development and conservation are both necessary elements for human prosperity and must be seen as an integrated part.

Sustainability in the context of the vision outlined above for the RWSS sector has many connotations and the following aspects are the critical ones.

• Sustainability of the local resources, especially the ground water tables as 90% of the services are dependent on this source.
• Sustaining the efficient performance of the created assets, at least for the design life. 
• Sustaining the health, economic and social development achieved through the process over generations.

Equity:  The principle of ‘equity’ underlines the process recognizing ones needs and finding solutions that fit the need. The communities in the rural areas live in diverse social, political, economic and environment zones. Even within the same village or habitation, communities differ in the capacity and entitlements. Therefore, solutions can not be based on ‘one size fits all’ approach, but have to have different sizes for different needs. Inter village equity is best achieved and managed by the process of community empowerment. Inter regional and sectoral equity requires institutionalizing grievance redressal mechanism through ‘Regulatory Commission’ at the State level. The principle of equity has to be addressed in a just manner and not by force or other such means. 

3.0 Guiding Principles:

In order to achieve the vision it is necessary to work around the following principles:

• devolve the delivery of water supply and sanitation services  to the appropriate tiers of the PRIs for maximising Demand Responsive Approach (DRA), increasing efficiency,  giving power to local people’s voice and  impact the process of strengthening  local governance
• build the capacity of the PRIs and the local communities to decide, plan, execute, take care of O&M aspects of the water and sanitation service delivery in an integrated manner including aspects related to groundwater management, environment management and health improvements. 

• reorient/ restructure the existing government agencies/ departments and build their capacity so as to play appropriate role as identified in the changed de-centralised reform climate.

• develop mechanisms to learn lessons from time to time, capture the voice of the people, especially the poor,  so as to improve the overall performance of the sector, from time to time and also enable redressal at various levels through appropriate regulatory mechanisms.

• To adopt an integrated approach that cuts across the sector issues and also across different but connected sectors.

The guiding principles are explained below:

3.1 Development to PRIs:  

In order to empower the communities to manage their WSS affaires it is imperative to  devolve responsibility for service delivery to the Panchayati Raj Institutions as per the 73^rd Constitutional Amendment. Devolvement involves transferring the ‘3 Fs’- functions, functionaries and finances- to the PRIs. In order to facilitate the process of empowering and devolvement, the State has already undertaken necessary policy and institutional initiatives. This includes the amendment to the Bombay Village Panchayat Act, empowering the Gram Sabha to nominate members to committees that look after WSS services in the village.  The following are the broad roles for the PRIs at various levels.  

                                             Village

·        Genaral Gram Sabha – is the supreme body to decide on various aspects at the village level. Gram Sabha will provide opportunity for participatory decision making, providing guidelines on policy and implementation of projects; overall monitoring and evaluation, selection of committee members . Gram Sabha will also ensure ‘inclusion’ and avoid ‘elite capture’  

·        Mahila Gram Sabha- a forum for women to come together and make decisions. The decisions taken by women here are ratified in the geeral Gram Sabha and included in their decisions.  

·        Gram Panchayat – Facilitating the decision making by the community; facilitating the flow of funds and ensuring accountability  

·        Village Water and Sanitation Committee –is a sub-committee of the GP, nominated by and accountable to the Gramsabha. VWSC will look after implementation of projects, quality control, financial management, O&M of projects completed  

·        Social Audit Committee – self audit of social, technical, financial performance of projects

                                      District

·        District Water and Sanitation Committee (DWSC)- is a sub-committee within the Zilla Parishad and will  provide overall policy guidance for project implementation, ensure equity and take care conflict management at the district level

·        District Water and Sanitation Department (DWSD) – is the administration wing within the Zilla Parishad and will provide management support for implementation, intra-sector coordination.  

3.2 Capacity building of PRIs:  

The State aims to develop the capacity of functionaries at all levels to ensure the implementation of the vision. This involves building the capacity of the PRIs and the local communities to plan, execute, take care of O&M aspects of the water and sanitation service delivery in an integrated manner. This function may be either outsourced to private ‘capacity building consortiums’ or provided by Government Agencies dependent on the requirements, as appropriate.