When Narsa Ram, the deputy sarpanch of Abu Road block’s Neechlagarh panchayat, told me that nearly every household in his panchayat had a functional toilet, I refused to believe him.

This just cannot be true, I told myself — after all, the panchayat is divided into scattered falis (hamlets) located atop different hilltops, with narrow pathways leading up to them.

These falis do not have access to schools, health centres or electricity, I was told. So a toilet in every house seemed impossible to me.

“You must be kidding, Narsa,” I told the deputy sarpanch. “And even if these households do have toilets, they must be lying unused.”

“Climb up the hills and see for yourself,” he replied.

“One of these days I will,” I promised him.

I got an opportunity to “climb up the hills”, as Narsa Ram had casually asked me to do, one pleasant winter morning when Naga Ram, a local resident, offered to take me along to Mahadev Fali, a hamlet of about 10 families ensconced in the Aravallis.

It could be reached by walking about 4 km uphill from Mahakudeshwar Mahadev temple, the point where the concrete road ends. As we approached Mahadev Fali after 45 minutes of negotiating steep, narrow pathways, we could see small brick enclosures adjacent to every house.

These were the toilets Narsa Ram was talking about.  

“You will see these enclosures beside every house in the entire panchayat,” Naga Ram told me.

The first house we came across belonged to Hamira Anna, a farmer who lived with his wife and two children. The house had concrete walls and thatched roof. Beside the house stood the toilet which looked like a brick-walled cubicle, with a plastic sack acting as a door. Inside the enclosure was a sparkling toilet seat, and a two-litre jar near the toilet seat indicated it was functional and that the family used it regularly.

“We have been using it ever since it was built,” Hamira’s Bibli reiterated, as if to drive away my doubts.

Several houses on different hilltops had similar toilets. These toilets were built one year back under central government’s total sanitation campaign (TSC).

War to defeat open defecation
Started in 1999, TSC is a flagship programme under the ministry of drinking water and sanitation to ensure sanitation facilities in rural areas with broader goal to eradicate the practice of open defecation. Under this programme the central government bears the cost of building the toilets and also gives cash incentives (Nirnal Gram Puruskar) to villages that have achieved open defecation free (ODF) status.

From last one year when these toilets were built the residents of these hamlets have stopped defecating in the open.

For Nona Ima, a 55- year- old farmer from Khetla fali, another hamlet with about fifty households, the toilet was a god send. “Earlier I had to walk long distance into the forest to defecate and I used to get tired. During monsoon, it was pretty difficult looking for places to squat,” he said.

“Its need is most felt when one falls sick. Walking around the hilly area when one is sick is very difficult,” he added.

The toilets have made life easier for women and girls who, before they were built, had to go out in the forest, which posed many risks.

“Earlier we (girls and women) could not go out during day — it is fraught with the risk of someone seeing us — and after dark there was a constant fear of snakes, or that some poisonous insect would bite us,” Champa, a 20-year-old girl from Khetla Fali, said. “But we have not gone out (to defecate) ever since these toilets have been built.”

The fact that open defecation is open invitation to diseases and contributes to pollution has registered well with the community. “Going out to relieve oneself is not good for the village. It leads to pollution and many diseases,” said Fuli, a 30-year-old woman from Mata Fali.

“Nearly 90 percent of the 400 households in this panchayat have functional toilets,” Narsa Ram said. No mean achievement this, considering toilets are conspicuous by their absence in the surrounding panchayats of this hilly terrain.

Again, Neechlagarh’s achievement is stellar in the backdrop of the country’s poor performance in the direction of making it free of open defecation. According to government’s own admission, 60 percent of India’s population defecates in the open.

So what clicked in Neechlagarh?
“While the awareness campaign carried out by the government has helped people change their mindset, it’s the effort made by community leaders that has been the real game-changer for this panchayat,” said Kalicharan Garacia, a local resident and zila parishad member.
The panchayat has several educated residents in key positions, including sarpanch Sharmi Bai (read our profile of Sharmi here: Unveiled: woman who calls shots in a man’s world and Narsa Ram, who have worked hard to take the message of total sanitation to its residents.

“Several gram sabhas were held in which residents were told of the benefits of building toilets. Besides, a huge awareness campaign was carried out with members of the panchayat, along with those from total sanitation campaign, visiting each house and convincing the residents to build toilets,” recalled Naga Ram.

This community-led campaign, coupled with government dole, has blazed a trail that can be replicated in areas where the total sanitation campaign is doing poorly.

Clearly, government’s standalone, subsidy-driven model has failed to achieve the desired target as many reports, including the government’s own, have been critical of it.

The World Bank released a report in July 2010 questioning sustainability of the central government’s Nirmal Gram Puraskar (NGP) programme, a cash incentive to encourage villages go 'open defecation-free'. The government doles out Rs 50,000 to Rs 50 lakh every year to villages that achieve the ODF status.

“Studies on NGP sustainability showed that only 73 percent have access to toilets in NGP villages, while usage of household toilets is low at 67 percent,” the report pointed out.

The report demonstrated that while villages do achieve the ODF status, lured by the cash incentive, they fail to sustain it in the long run. Toilets the government helps construct lie unused as people return to the age-old practice of defecating in the open, it said.

Enter the community — an alternative help
The failure of this model has given the proponents of an alternative model called community-led total sanitation programme (CLTS), first tested in Bangladesh, to advocate its implementation in India.

According to Kamal Kar, a developmental consultant who pioneered the concept, a community-triggered behavioural change is required more to achieve this than d not government doles. “The earlier approaches (read subsidy-driven) to sanitation often led to uneven adoption, problems with long-term sustainability and only partial use, besides creating a culture of dependence on subsidies,” he had told me when I met him in June 2011 during a book launch in New Delhi (read the report here: Time for community-led sanitation drive)

Explaining the concept, the home page of CLTS website, says: “CLTS is an innovative methodology for mobilising communities to completely eliminate open defecation (OD). Communities are facilitated to conduct their own appraisal and analysis of open defecation (OD) and take their own action to become ODF (open defecation-free).

“At the heart of CLTS lies the recognition that merely providing toilets does not guarantee their use, nor results in improved sanitation and hygiene.”

At Neechlagarh, the community, while it has not heard of the CLTS approach, has surely taken its message to the heart. “We have ensured that people not only build toilets but use it as well,” sarpanch Sharmi Bai said.

While the government is yet to pay heed to this alternative approach, rural development minister Jairam Ramesh, when in charge of the sanitation (he was relieved of the portfolio in October last year) did realise the limitations of TSC and had advocated its restructuring.

Talking about a change in approach, Ramesh, in February last year, had said that the gram panchayat would be made to anchor the programme.

"I think this change from a focus on individual toilet construction to making the programme anchored in the gram panchayat, and giving gram panchayat the responsibility for preparing a comprehensive plan for making the gram panchyat open defecation-free and providing sustainable solutions (is) something that we would like to promote as part of the 12th plan strategy," he had told a workshop on sanitation in New Delhi. 

"This is the time for innovation. We have to think differently.”

Mahadev Fali, Mata Fali, Khetla Fali and other hamlets in Neechlagarh surely thought differently.