India, Mumbai: man dies in water protest

One man died in a violent protest against water shortages held outside the headquarters of Mumbai’s municipal corporation BMC (Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation) on 3 December 2009. Insufficient rains have forced the BMC to impose steep water cuts until at least July 2010.

About 1,500 activists from the NGO Swabhimaan, led by its president Nitesh Rane, son of Revenue Minister Narayan Rane, raised slogans for clean and adequate water supply and tried to enter the BMC building. They were met by 500 police.

Viral Dholakia

In the scuffle, 43-year-old Viral Dholakia, state co-ordinator of Swabhimaan, fell to the ground. He was taken to the state-run GT Hospital, where doctors said that he complained of chest pain and breathlessness.

Dholakia died half an hour later, ironically on his birthday. Hospital authorities claimed that he did not die of a lathi (police stick)-charge injury, as there were no visible marks on his body.

Five had sustained major injuries. “This is disgusting. We went to ask for water and got beaten up instead. My family of 10 barely gets water for an hour a day,” said Mohmmad Umar, 50, a businessman, who had injuries all over his body.

“Almost everyday, fights break out in our area over water. There is hardly any water supply and residents fight for every drop,” said Mohmmad Ambir, 35, a Mulund resident who also suffered severe injuries.

[...] Addressing the crowd, Nitesh Rane said, “If the water supply is not restored immediately, we will not allow the Commissioner, Mayor and corporators of the ruling Sena-BJP to walk on the roads.”

[...] The police detained Nitesh and his supporters at Azad Maidan Police Station and later released them on bail.

Protesters came from Vasai, Virara

Swabhimaan managed to get protesters from as far as Vasai and Virar, which do not even fall under BMC’s jurisdiction. The Traffic Department confirmed that the organisation had sought permission to get 75 buses from outside city limits to carry supporters to the protest venue.

Nitesh picked wrong day

Nitesh Rane would have done well to check the schedules of acting municipal commissioner R A Rajeev, Mayor Shraddha Jadhav and additional municipal commissioner Anil Diggikar, who is in-charge of water supply projects, as all these important functionaries were out of the city.

Finding no one else, Nitesh only met AMC A K Singh, in-charge of Education and Security along with eastern suburbs. Rajeev and Jadhav were in New Delhi to receive the prize BMC has won for being the best civic body across the country. Diggikar is on leave as his father has expired.

Is water mafia at work?

Though it cannot be established that any political party supports water mafias who break into the BMC water mains, sources from the civic body allege that the strong lobby has political patronage.

According to an official from BMC, ever since the drive to take action against illegal connections was launched, threat calls to department officials have increased. “Because of our drive, most of the water mafia panicked and we believe that they are trying to put pressure on us by using their political connections.

The lobby is so influential that it has made crores in this business. So, they are protesting in a different manner just to divert public attention,” he alleged.

‘We didn’t order lathi-charge’

“At first, the crowd was quite peaceful, but then they broke the BMC’s security bunkers at the main gate. From there, they headed towards Gate 3. Here, they tried to use brute force to get inside the headquarters. The police who were on duty were shoved around and they lathi-charged in retaliation. None of my officers specifically ordered a lathi charge,” said DCP Zone I Vishwas Nangre-Patil.

Nearly 30 people were injured in the protests outside the BMC HQ. The protests became violent when the mob tried to forcibly enter the BMC but was lathicharged by police. Photo: Bombay Mirror

Senior Inspector Bhaurao Bhawale of the Azad Maidan police station said, “People in the crowd were intent on getting inside the BMC building and damaging government property. We have taken action against those responsible in accordance with the law,” he said.

According to police, 21 persons were arrested and charged under Section 353 (assault or criminal force to deter public servant from discharge of his duty), Section 338 (causing grievous hurt by act endangering life or personal safety of others), Section 341 (wrongful restraint), Section 452 (punishment for assault or criminal force other than on grave provocation) of the Indian Penal Code.

Source: Mumbai Mirror, 04 Dec 2009

Nepal, Dhulikhel: School Led Total Sanitation project

The Environment and Public Health Organization (ENPHO) has signed an agreement with Japan Water Forum Fund to implement a water and sanitation improvement project at primary schools in Dhulikhel Municipality.

The project, which focuses on three schools Chayal Devi Primary School, Kali Devi Primary School and Mandaladevi Primary School, aims to improve hygienic conditions and ensure safe drinking water and proper sanitation in the schools and surrounding community through the School Led Total Sanitation (SLTS) campaign.

The program is integrated with the ongoing Urban and Environmental Improvement Project (UEIP) program of Dhulikhel Municipality. An orientation program on SLTS was conducted to 25 school teachers, school management committee (SMC) and parent teachers association (PTA) on November 10 where they have committed to declare their area as open defecation free (ODF) area.

Read more about SLTS in Nepal in:
Adhikari, S. and Shrestha, N.L. (2008). School led total sanitation : a successful model to promote school and community sanitation and hygiene in Nepal. In: Beyond construction : use by all : a collection of case studies from sanitation and hygiene promotion practitioners in South Asia. London, UK, WaterAid and Delft, The Netherlands, IRC International Water and Sanitation Centre. Available here

Source: ENPHO Monthly Bulletin, Nov 2009

Uzbekistan: US$ 60 million ADB loan to support water supply and sanitation

The Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the Republic of Uzbekistan hace signed a US$ 60 million loan agreement to support the government’s efforts to strengthen the water supply and sanitation sector.

The loan, from ADB’s concessional Asian Development Fund, is the first tranche of a US$ 300 million multi tranche financing facility (MFF) – ADB’s first MFF investment program to Uzbekistan. The programme aims to improve the living standards, environment, and health of three million people in Uzbekistan.

Since 2000, ADB he provided US$ 193.1 million in loans and US$ 5.1 million in grants to the water supply and sanitation sector sector.

The loan will finance improvements to water source and distribution systems in Damkhodja and 11 district centres in Bukhara and Navoi provinces, as well as upgrade wastewater treatment plant and sewerage systems in the capital city of Surkhandarya province. The programme will also strengthen water supply and sanitation institutions and support capacity development. A performance-based service contract and lease contract will be piloted for service agencies to encourage more private investment in the sector. The loan will include programme preparation and management support to implement the loan and to prepare and design the remaining tranches under the investment program.

The total project costs are estimated at US$ 75 million. ADB will provide a US$ 60 million loan with repayment term of 32 years, including a grace period of eight years with an interest charge of 1% per year, rising to 1.5% for the balance of the term.

Source: ADB, 01 Dec 2009

India: cities needs a paradigm shift to move towards sustainability

Increasing urbanization in India has led to pressure on urban infrastructure and deteriorating service delivery. Improving service quality given the infrastructure constraints and limited capacity, especially with rapidly rising demand is a challenge for the local governments. Good Governance is therefore a prerequisite to achieve efficiency and quality in service delivery. Thus realizing its importance, The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) with the Water and Sanitation Programme (WSP) South Asia and Infrastructure Development Finance Company Ltd (IDFC) organised the “National Urban Conference – Good governance: towards improved basic services“, from 23-24 November 2009, in New Delhi .

Inaugurating the conference, Mr Jaipal Reddy, Hon’ble Minister of Urban Development, Ministry of Urban Development, said, “The problems resulting from increased urbanisation are inevitable and recognising this, the govt. instituted the JNNURM (Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission). There is a need for distributional equity and investment in basic services as opposed to building more and more flyovers. 90% of the investment should be spent in issues such as sanitation, slum development, public transport and water.”

The Ministry of Urban Development has recently developed indicators for measuring service delivery.

The conference discussed the following issues:

1. Promoting good urban governance in order to achieve improvements in service delivery, integration of the poor and the marginalised groups, environmental protection and meaningful participation of local communities.
2. Ways to recover costs of providing urban services through rationalization of user charges to various groups of consumers, better billing and better collection mechanisms.
3. Options and ways to enhance the quality and efficiency of the existing systems of service delivery bring down losses and inefficiencies like unaccounted water loss etc.
4. Issues of equitable access to basic urban services and systems for ensuring availability to all citizens.

In April 2009, TERI released its report on An Exploration of Sustainability in the Provision of Basic Urban Services In Indian Cities. The study included a comprehensive assessment of state of urban service delivery in water, transport, power, solid waste and buildings sector with an in-depth assessment of Governance issue that over-arch the whole. The study came up with recommendations for service delivery improvements as well as improvement in governance mechanisms to facilitate the same. More recently TERI has been recognized as Center for Excellence in Urban Governance by the Ministry of Urban Development (MoUD) and through this TERI intends to take forward and implement some of its recommendations.

Source: TERI, 24 Nov 2009

Afghanistan, Badakhshan: enclave seen as model for development

A New York Times article tells the story of how direct grants to a village council in Jurm, Badakshan province, have reduced corruption and helped the community set up and manage their own water system and to introduce education for girls. This development model of providing small grants, often less than US$ 100,000, to village councils, has been replicated in thousands of other villages as part of Afghanistan’s National Solidarity Program, set up in 2003.

Read excerpts from the full article below.

Small grants given directly to villagers have brought about modest but important changes in this corner of Afghanistan, offering a model in a country where official corruption and a Taliban insurgency have frustrated many large-scale development efforts.

Since arriving in Afghanistan in 2001, the United States and its Western allies have spent billions of dollars on development projects, but to less effect and popular support than many had hoped for.

Much of that money was funneled through the central government, which has been increasingly criticized as incompetent and corrupt. Even more has gone to private contractors hired by the United States who siphon off almost half of every dollar to pay the salaries of expatriate workers and other overhead costs.

Not so in the Jurm valley in the province of Badakhshan, in the northeast. People here have taken charge for themselves — using village councils and direct grants as part of an initiative called the National Solidarity Program, introduced by an Afghan ministry in 2003.

Before then, this valley had no electricity or clean water, its main crop was poppy and nearly one in 10 women died in childbirth, one of the highest maternal mortality rates in the world.

Today, many people have water taps, fields grow wheat and it is no longer considered shameful for a woman to go to a doctor.

If there are lessons to be drawn from the still tentative successes here, they are that small projects often work best, that the consent and participation of local people are essential and that even baby steps take years.

[...] Jurm was tormented by warlords in the 1990s, and though it never fell to the Taliban, the presence of the central government, even today, is barely felt. The idea to change that was simple: people elected the most trusted villagers, and the government in Kabul, helped by foreign donors, gave them direct grants — money to build things like water systems and girls’ schools for themselves.

Local residents contend that the councils work because they take development down to its most basic level, with villagers directing the spending to improve their own lives, cutting out middle men, local and foreign, as well as much of the overhead costs and corruption.

[...] The grants were small, often less than $100,000. The plan’s overall effectiveness is still being assessed by academics and American and Afghan officials, but the idea has already been replicated in thousands of villages across the country.

Anecdotal accounts point to some success. There have even been savings. When villages in the Jurm Valley wanted running water, for instance, they did much of the work themselves, with help from an engineer. A private contractor with links to a local politician had asked triple the price. (The villagers declined.)

[...] One basic problem was literacy, said Ghulam Dekan, a local worker with the Aga Khan Development Network, the nonprofit group that supports the councils here. Fewer than a third of Afghans can read, making the work of the councils painfully slow. Villagers were suspicious of projects, believing that the people in the groups that introduced them were Christian missionaries.

[...] Most projects, no matter how simple, took five years. Years of war had smashed Afghan society into rancorous bits, making it difficult to resist efforts by warlords to muscle in on projects.

“They said, ‘For God’s sake, we can’t do this, we don’t have the capability,’ ” Mr. Dekan said. “We taught them to have confidence.”

[...] But forcing conditions would have violated a basic principle of the approach: never start a project that is not backed by all members of the community, or it will fail.

“People have to be mentally ready,” said Akhtar Iqbal, Aga Khan’s director in Badakhshan. If they are not, the school or clinic will languish unused, a frequent problem with large-scale development efforts.

Five years later, in the village of Fargamanch [...] 3,270 families have taps for clean drinking water near their homes, reducing waterborne diseases.

The councils are also a check on corruption. When 200 bags of wheat mysteriously disappeared from the local government this year, council members demanded they be returned. (They were.)

When a minister’s aide cashed a check meant for a transformer, Mr. Ataullah spent a week tracking down a copy. (The aide was fired.)

“The government doesn’t like us anymore,” Mr. Azghari said, laughing. “They want the old system back.”

Source: Sabrina Tavernise and Sangar Rahimi, New York Times, 13 Nov 2009

India, Orissa: Bonita Trust funds water and sanitation facilities for 1,500 rural families

With financial support from The Bonita Trust, based in Gibraltar, Gram Vikas has recently launched a water and sanitation project in 20 rural habitations in the state of Orissa.

MANTRA – Movement and Action Network for the Transformation of Rural Areas project aims to provide a toilet and bathing room with piped water supply to each of the target 1500 families in 20 villages over a two year period. The establishment of community-led water and sanitation infrastructure is complemented with a series of capacity building activities around health and hygiene education, leadership development and fund management

Ruth Parasol DeLeon, founding member of the Bonita Trust’s International Advisory Board says “We visited Gram Vikas during our field trip to India in January [2009], and were extremely impressed by the development work that they have undertaken in one of the most disadvantaged areas in the country. They have an entrepreneurial approach to developing the necessary technology to provide for the most basic needs of the communities, and have established working partnerships with the families which lie at the heart of the development programmes.”

Bonita has focused the majority of its community grant-making in the United Kingdom, India, Israel, and Gibraltar and has since inception in 2004, donated over £7.5 million (US$ 12.2 million) to charities leveraging technology to deliver programmes in the areas of education, health and entrepreneurship working in partnership with communities worldwide.

The MANTRA project in Orissa is the first water and sanitation project to receive funding from the Bonita Trust.

Source: PR.com / Bonita Trust, 28 Oct 2009

Pakistan: Safeguard and Save the Children join hands for school sanitation

Procter & Gamble’s Safeguard brand and Save the Children announced their new partnership to reach 100 primary schools in Pakistan through a school health and hygiene project. The project will benefit 40,000 school age children in Quetta, Karachi and Lahore with improved sanitation facilities and health and hygiene education.

Through this partnership, Safeguard and Save the Children aim to address the incidence of common illnesses arising from poor sanitation facilities in school children, and empower Pakistani children to adopt healthy habits through health education and improved access to handwashing, toilet and water supply facilities. The overall aim is to enable children and their families to adopt better health and hygiene habits in the long-term.

Safeguard appeals to Pakistani mothers to help improve the lives of less affluent children. Every bar of Safeguard bought from October 2009 to March 2010 will contribute towards building handwashing, toilet and water supply facilities in Pakistani schools where children do not have access today.

Speaking at the launch press conference, Chief Guest, Minister of Health, Sindh, Dr. Sagheer Ahmed stated, “Today, we are very proud that the private sector has stepped up and extended their full support to the critical issue of sanitation and hygiene, which will greatly help the cause of improving the health of Pakistan. According to estimates, water, sanitation and hygiene related diseases cost Pakistan’s economy about Rs 112 billion per year and over Rs 300 million a day in terms of health cost and lost earnings. Through this partnership, Safeguard and Save the Children have marked the critical importance of adopting healthy and hygienic habits through enabling access to improved sanitation facilities. We would like to thank the Safeguard and Save the Children teams for leading this initiative that has the potential to save millions of Pakistani lives.”

[...] Mubashara Khalid, the Brand Manager for Safeguard in Pakistan, also stated at the event: “Every day, 670,000 children miss school due to illnesses. According to the Karachi Soap Health Study (2002) led by the Center for Disease Control (USA), HOPE and P&G, regular handwashing with soap can reduce the incidence of diarrhea and common illnesses by up to 50 percent. [...] We will be building these facilities this year, and are committed to provide sustainable maintenance to these facilities for the years to come.”

Safeguard has empowered over 6 million children in more than 17,000 Pakistani schools through Sehat-o-Safai, the largest school health and hygiene awareness campaign in the country. To reinforce its commitment to health and hygiene, Safeguard is making this sustainable long term investment to improve the lives of Pakistani children and to instill the message of the importance of handwashing with soap. The Safeguard team will be educating 40,000 children through this partnership, and about 1.5 million children overall through the Sehat-o-Safai program this year.

Source: PR Log / 03 Nov 2009

India: government announces that four more states have no dry latrines

According to Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation Minister Kumari Selja, within the last one year, the states of Andhra Pradesh, West Bengal, Nagaland and Assam have announced that they have no dry latrines, implying that manual scavenging has effectively been abolished.

The government claims there are only four states left with dry latrines: Bihar, Uttarakhand, Jammu & Kashmir and Uttar Pradesh. This contradicts a May 2009 news report that the Supreme Court had sent notices to the governments of Delhi, Punjab, Haryana and Rajasthan seeking an explanation for their failure to demolish dry latrines and prosecute the owners.

Under the revised guidelines of the government’s “Integrated Low Cost Sanitation” (ILCS) scheme, a total of 241,931 dry latrines are being converted into pour-flush latrines and 32,305 new pour-flush latrines are being constructed during 2008-2009 and 2009-10 (up to 31.08.2009).

The ILCS scheme was initiated in 1980-81 through the Ministry of Home Affairs and later through Ministry of Social Justice & Empowerment. The scheme was transferred in 1989-90 to the Ministry of Urban Development & Poverty Alleviation and from 2003-2004 onwards to the Ministry of Urban Employment and Poverty Alleviation/Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation (UEPA/HUPA). The scheme has helped in constructing/converting over 2.8 million latrines to liberate over 60,000 scavengers so far. To improve the programme’s performance revised guidelines were introduced in January, 2008.

The main objective of the Scheme is to convert low cost sanitation units through sanitary two pit pour flush latrines with superstructures and appropriate variations to suit local conditions (area specific latrines), but 25% of the funds of the scheme are also made available for construction of new latrines where economically weaker section (EWS) households have no latrines.

Under the Scheme, the central subsidy is 75%, State Subsidy 15% and beneficiary share is 10%. The upper ceiling cost is Rs.10,000/- (US$ 214) for the complete unit. For the States falling in the category of difficult and hilly areas, 25% extra cost is provided.

The Scheme is scheduled to end in 2009-10.

Source: PIB, 10 Nov 2009

India: evaluation of existing capacities in WATSAN sector

A study, commissioned by the WASH Institute, reviews water and sanitation capacity building initiatives and requirements in India. It is based on desk research, interviews with national-level stakeholders and interviews with stakeholders in the four states of Assam, Rajasthan, Maharashtra and West Bengal.

The study analyzes the quality of trained manpower available and manpower-related issues faced by stakeholders involved in implementing water and sanitation programmes. It identifies the factors attributing to the shortage of human resources in the sector needed to achieve the Millennium Development Goals for water and sanitation.

A more integrated approach towards “trained manpower” in the water supply and sanitation sector is proposed. It will also not come as a great surprise that the study confirms the need for a separate specialised training institute like the WASH Institute.

The WASH Institute is an initiative supported by a consortium of water sector organisations in India, UK, Netherlands (including the IRC International Water and Sanitation Centre), Sweden and USA. In May 2008 a secretariat was established in Kodaikanal, Tamil Nadu, with support from WaterAid India and Plan International (India). In June 2008 the institute officially registered as a trust.

In 2008-2009 the WASH Institute conducted five on-site training courses and provided technical assistance to four ecosan projects.

Plan International (India), WASH Institute and ORG-Nielsen Group (2009). Evaluation of existing capacities in WATSAN sector. Kodaikanal, India, WASH Institute. 89 p. : 8 fig., 3 tab.
Download full report

WASH Institute web site

India: US$ 7.9 billion needed to provide toilets to everyone

A study by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) estimates that US$ 7.9 billion is needed to provide toilets for all households that currently lack toilets in India. Of that amount, US$ 4.7 billion is needed for rural areas, and US$ 3.2 billion for urban areas [1].

This figure exceeds the National Commission on Macroeconomics and Health (2005) estimate for ensuring universal access to safe drinking water and sanitation.

To connect all urban households lacking underground drainage to sewer systems would cost about U$ 7.7 billion and for rural households, about US$ 25 billion.

Since these financing requirements are so huge, the ADB paper suggests progressive improvement in the types of sanitation solutions. Sewerage systems tend to benefit richer households; hence, some form of capital cost recovery could be considered to finance sewerage-related infrastructure.

The ADB paper also calls for greater attention for the on the disadvantaged – households from the poorest quintile and scheduled tribes – and the states that have consistently underperformed (Orissa, Bihar, and Madhya Pradesh) could help accelerate further progress.

[1] Bonu, S. and Kim, H. (2009). Sanitation in India : progress, differentials, correlates, and challenges. (South Asia occassional paper series : no. 2). Manila, Philippines, Asia Development Bank. ix, 35 p. : 16 fig., 5 tab. ISBN 978-971-561-828-1

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