Motivation of people to participate in rural sanitation through Young Professionals (YPs): An experimental study

Sanitation is one of the basic determinants of the quality of life and human well-being and also the most essential basic facility for every household (HH). The government as well as private institutions, NGOs, SHGs, and Youth Groups have been involved to create awareness on sanitation and made efforts to construct individual latrine under SBM schemes in the entire country. Due to these efforts, India could able cover nearly 100% of latrine facilities and the Government of India has declared open defecation free (ODF) on 2nd October 2019. But few studies highlighted that few household members are not using latrine facilities though they are having a latrine. The present experimental study tries to explain the motivational factors to access and the reasons for under-utilization of toilet facilities and highlights the value of motivators (Young Professionals- YPs) to create awareness among people and to involve communities in improving sanitation facilities in rural areas. This study is part of the SCOPE-Arghyam WatSan Fellowship Programme-II Cycle, implemented by SCOPE. The study was conducted in Dharwad, Gadag and Haveri districts of Karnataka. The YPs after their initial training stayed in their respective villages and worked closely with the community in both understanding the problems and trying to solve the problems. It comes out clearly from the study those serious and sincere efforts to work with the community, making them think about the problems of open defecation (OD) result in very good outputs. The study found that what the villagers lack is more in the social input than the money and the mere provision of money cannot solve the sanitation problem and sustain of ODF in rural areas. Due to the stay and intensive social interventions of the YPs, it was observed that not only people-built toilets but 82% of all the members in the families started using toilets. It must be high on the agenda of all those working on rural sanitation who may be the Governments, PRIs, CSR Initiatives, NGOs and Funding Agencies to plan an inspired social input with the concerned staying in the village to facilitate SBM. The concerned Zilla Panchayats need to look into it and build a motivated team to facilitate SBM considering the construction, usage of toilets and sustain of ODF. The GP members, ZP members, the SHGs, etc. who stay in the village could be trained and motivated to play the role played by the YPs. It is suggested that concerned Zilla Panchayats or Gram Panchayats should hire a person like YP or use ANMs effectively to create awareness and make the community own the programme and participate and make sustain of ODF.