Blog

Author, diplomat and Member of Parliament Shashi Tharoor recently wrote an NDTV blog on sanitation quoting liberally from r.i.c.e. research! Here’s what he says: As Health Minister Harshvardhan has pointed out, poor sanitation breeds infections and leads to major public health problems;...Read More..

Chaitanya Kalbag wrote a very interesting column in the Economic Times, the world’s second largest english business daily, on the day of the launch of the Swachh Bharat Mission, quoting us quite a bit. We thank him! He said, [The] government pledged...Read More..

The India today’s cover story for this week is called “Dirty Nation”. Dean and Diane have a column for the cover story, called “To end open defecation, make Indians want to.” We reproduce the full text of the column. – Over...Read More..

  Dean Spears, our executive director, was on NDTV yesterday to discuss research and policies on open defecation in India. Check out the full video here, which includes reporting from parts of rural India as well. Dean’s segment starts 13:55 minutes...Read More..

These days, we end up writing so many articles that we miss some of them on this blog. We are sorry. One such article was by Payal, written for the cool website scroll.in. The full text of the article is appended...Read More..

If you have been looking for ideas on ending open defecation by 2019, look no further than the SQUAT Policy Brief No. 1. We have thought a lot about the ideas and action points in the policy brief, and believe that...Read More..

Check out Aashish and Payal’s article in today’s Indian Express, calling for a Sanitation Sena in India, and they made a very cool cartoon too! Sangita, Jeff Hammer, and Jayamala Subramaniam, rang in the Swacch Bharat Mission on India at 9 with Anubha...Read More..

The government has announced that the Swacch Bharat Mission is to be a mass movement to make India open defecation free in five years. By spending one lakh thirty four thousand crore rupees for the construction of about 11 crore 11 lakh...Read More..

The Government has decided that all of its citizens and the government employees will take a ‘sanitation pledge’ on Mahatma Gandhi’s birth anniversary this year. Though the biggest sanitation challenge faced by the country is its rampant open defecation, it...Read More..

This week I’m in Sitapur, and it’s nice to be back after a long time.   I learn so much here.  Today, I was having a conversation about rural sanitation with Baby, a woman who long-time readers of our blog will...Read More..

A shorter version of the squat working paper 1 was just published by the EPW. Check it out on the EPW website! The paper will be available for free download starting tomorrow, but we are linking a copy for you! Don’t miss it. See ithere....Read More..

These days, we end up posting useful articles on twitter and facebook first, and on the blog later. There has been a flurry of articles in the media recently on sanitation and toilets in India. In this blogpost, we curate the best of them...Read More..

  The paper, available here, mirrors several of our findings. It says, Even after constructing toilets, planting trees, and cleaning the village, it was not easy to convince some people to use their toilets. Though there were enough toilets, some...Read More..

Now, I don't really like to talk too much about toilets because it takes away from the conversation on latrine use, but Aashish and I just did some math on missing toilets, and the statistics are pretty stark. For the...Read More..

The above is a snip out of the new draft action plan for the Swachh Bharat Mission. I am very concerned that the emphasis of the new plan will be on latrine construction -- especially in practice, whatever comprehensive list...Read More..

  Today's must-read is Varad Pande's blog on IBN live: Much has been said about the recent priority placed on sanitation, with the Prime Minister taking up the issue most recently from the ramparts of the Red Fort on Independence...Read More..