Abstract:
Sanitation brings the greatest return for investment of development. For every single rupee spent on sanitation approximately 9 times is saved in education, health and economic development. Regardless of the entrenched truth, this sector has been ignored for most of the Indian post-Independence history. A large number of Indians are subjected to grave sick wellbeing, increasing dangers to security, lower expenditure on education and nutrition, lower income and reduced productivity resulting into a deep cycle of poverty �â� � just because of need for basic sanitation facility.
The situation intensifies in urban India. Increasing slum population and absence of satisfactory sanitation force more than 50 million people to defecate in the open each day. The poor suffer the most due to lack of sanitation in the form of ill children, uneducated girl child and unproductive people. All together this makes these people even more vulnerable.
The need for improved urban sanitation in India is increasing. Rising densities of slums increasing levels of urbanization and historical lack of attention to urban sanitation only make this need more urgent.
This report highlights that policy developments which focus on urban sanitation can go a long way. And provide access to improved sanitation and ensuring healthy, prosperous city.
Sanitation is access to, and use of, excreta and wastewater facilities and services that ensure privacy and dignity, ensuring a clean and healthy living environment for all. Facilities and services should include the collection, transport, treatment and disposal of human excreta, domestic wastewater and solid waste, and associated hygiene promotion.
