PM Modi’s move to launch the Swachh Bharat Mission with a focus on construction of toilets was revolutionary. However, this mission comes with a target—toilets in every household by October 2019. To achieve it, governments and local authorities have frequently adopted coercive and dehumanising methods. So when Puducherry Lt Governor Kiran Bedi issued an order that a free rice scheme would be suspended till villagers cleaned up their localities, she was not acting without precedent. Bedi rightfully faced a hail of criticism before ‘withholding’ her order but similar orders have been officially or unofficially issued across India.
Part of the mission has been an attempt to ensure behaviour change—as building toilets alone is no guarantee that they will be used. The behaviour change method adopted is known as Community-Led Total Sanitation. CLTS does include elements of ‘naming and shaming’ towards achieving its goal of making a community understand the importance of sanitation.
However, the method necessitates that through what is known as ‘triggering’ a community until it agrees on the importance of sanitation and begins to change its behaviour. But in many parts of India coercive steps—threatening to cut off rations, water, power or even filing police cases—are adopted instead. This means vulnerable people are frightened into constructing toilets without being made to understand the need for such toilets. Reports have shown how people go into debt to achieve this for fear of losing benefits as the government subsidy is given after the toilet has been built.
Aside from flying in the face of human dignity, these methods cause two problems: they remove the element of behaviour modification ensuring there is no real change, but worse, they create a resentment among people about the importance of sanitation. If the government wants lasting change it needs to prioritise and incentivise behaviour modification over mere toilet construction and crack down on insensitive, dehumanising methods.
