Swachh Bharat Mission-Gramin

study by Public Affairs Centre, funded by Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation

Background

 

The target of Sustainable Development Goal 6 is to ‘ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all’. Of the 6 measurable targets of this SDG, 6.2 clearly states that ‘by 2030, achieve access to adequate and equitable sanitation and hygiene for all and end open defecation paying special attention to the need of women and girls and those in vulnerable situations’.

The Government of India’s Swachh Bharat Abhiyan or Clean India Mission that succeeds the previous Nirmal Bharat Abhiyan aims to address this target by committing to an Open Defecation Free (ODF) India by October 2, 2019 the 150th birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi. While the relevant ministries and departments are working furiously towards achieving this ambitious goal, questions are increasingly being raised on the process and quality of construction of toilets, their sustainability for long-term usage as well as the issue of usage itself.

It is in this context, that Public Affairs Centre (PAC), a Bangalore based non-profit think tank focused on six districts each of two states Odisha Odisha pic 1and Tamil Nadu to assess ground realities related to the implementation of the Swachh Bharat Mission-Gramin (SBM-G) programme and advocate for change using evidence collected through its repertoire of social accountability tools.

PAC used its pioneering Citizen Report Card (CRC) approach to collect information from beneficiaries regarding their experiences with the NBA and SBM-G programmes. This led to the identification of five issues of concern, one of the main ones being the lack of ‘ownership’ of these toilets among beneficiaries. Supply-side issues such as timeliness of fund flows and carrying out of functional responsibilities were explored using the CRC+ approach.

Currently, the Community Score Card (CSC) approach is being carried out using scoring mechanisms to bring users and SBM-G implementers together in interactive platforms for preparing joint action plans for a more informed implementation of this programme. While this is still a work in progress, from its successful experiments so far in each of these districts, it is very clear that systematic collection of evidence, sharing of the same among all stakeholders working in the spectrum of sanitation, in open platforms for dialogues and action plans, can lead to more efficient implementation of this programme.

Swachh Bharat Mission-Gramin

Public Affairs Centre (PAC), a Bangalore based non-profit think tank focused on six districts each of two states Odisha Odisha and Tamil Nadu to assess ground realities related to the implementation of the Swachh Bharat Mission-Gramin (SBM-G) programme and advocate for change using evidence collected through its repertoire of social accountability tools.

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Citizen Report Card

The Citizen Report Card (CRC) is a simple yet powerful tool to provide public agencies with systematic feedback from users of public services.

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Community Score Card

Community Score Card (CSC) is a community based public service monitoring tool. It differs from the Citizen Report Card by being participative in nature, where a community as a whole scores the public service delivery performance.

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Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, also known as the Gates Foundation, is a private foundation founded by Bill and Melinda Gates. It was launched in 2000 and is said to be the largest transparently operated private foundation in the world.

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Project Films

PAC_J_LOGO_100

Public Affairs Centre

PAC is a not for profit organization, established in 1994 with a mandate to improve the quality of governance in India.

Social Accountability Tools

  • the range of methods, tools and choices that involve ordinary citizens and civil society in general into the process of allocation, tracking disbursement, and monitoring use of public resources
  • these mechanisms help ensure greater accountability to citizens for public actions and outcomes
  • and they constitute demand side approaches to public policy reform