Flush With Loans: Micro Credit for Rural Sanitation
This paper looks at the pioneering initiative by WaterAid, a leading NGO working on water and sanitation in India, to introduce a 'low cost and low subsidy' credit scheme for rural sanitation in Tamil Nadu. With the combined efforts of WaterAid and SCOPE [a local NGO], the scheme has achieved the objective of 100 per cent sanitation coverage in 19 villages by making the beneficiary central in its implementation strategy. Subsidy is minimal with loans being provided to potential beneficiaries through a revolving fund. This approach of targeting the poorest has influenced the economically better off families to go for sanitation without any form of subsidy.
The sections on different Indian states includes the Karnataka government's initiative to undertake a major exercise to desilt percolation tanks, a traditional source of drinking water and irrigation in the region. This has been ably supported by NGOs working in Karnataka, and has gone a long way in supplementing drinking water requirements as well as reviving a traditional technology.
The two pieces on Gujarat highlight innovative practices that are in the process of implementation. Both involve decentralised methods of implementation and are people-centred and participatory. In Junagadh, a small, decentralised, low-cost intervention has provided more benefits to the local villagers than all the large investments made in the region. In Bhavanagar, the Dutch program in partnership with the Gujarat government is trying to create an alternative model of implementing a regional piped water supply scheme. The central pillar in this approach is village-level decentralised planning.
