Challenges and opportunities

1. Institutions and Gender:
challenges and opportunities
By
Mukul Kumar, Ila Patel, Indranil De & Paras Charan
Centre for Rural-Urban Dynamics
Institute of Rural Management Anand
Anand

2. Institutions and gender: challenges
and opportunities
Objectives:
• To understand institutional and gender dimension of sanitation
practices in three small towns of Uttar Pradesh
• To understand gaps in both formal and informal sanitation practices
followed in these towns
• To understand gender dimension of sanitation practice in three town
• To suggest new institutional, social and gender related suggestions to
improve sanitation regimes in small towns of Uttar Pradesh

3. Institutions and gender: challenges
and opportunities
Sites of Study:
• Mughalsarai
• Unnao
• Gangaghat
Reasons for Selection:
• Small towns have very limited infrastructure for sewage treatment
• Potential for pollution of the Ganges from fecal waste is very high
• Study will be manageable in a short period of time and will lead us to
intervention points as early as possible

4. Institutions and gender: challenges
and opportunities
Methodology
• Multiple field visits to these towns
• Consultations with heads of different State govt./PSU institutions
/departments / organisations relevant for sanitation practices in the towns
• Consultations with middle level and field level staff and
councillors(including women) of Nagar Palika Parishad (NPP) in towns
• Consultation with the Indian Railway official regarding sanitation in
Mughalsarai

5. Institutions and gender: challenges
and opportunities
Methodology (contd.)
• Informal interviews with community members and women
• Focus Group Discussion with women
• Consultations with waste pickers and local traders of waste in these towns
• Transect walk/drive of these towns
• Literature Review
• Consultative Workshop with stakeholders at Lucknow in August

6. Institutions and gender: challenges
and opportunities
Mughalsarai
• It is a class I municipality since 1974
• Sanitation in Mughalsarai town is looked after by two institutions: NPP
and Indian Railways
• 70 per cent houses in Nagarpalika have latrine facility inside the house
• 96 per cent in Railway settlement have latrines inside their premises
• Mughalsarai can be broadly divided in three parts:
– Category I: Central and older Mughalsarai: Most have septic toilets
– Category II: Some household members might be defecating in the
open
– Category III: Majority defecate in the open

7. Institutions and gender: challenges
and opportunities
Institutions
• Mughalsarai NPP
– Sanitation and Health: A little over 400 workers, 180 of them
are government employees, no one posted as sanitary
inspector
– Road cleaning, drain cleaning, septage disposal and solid waste
disposal are its responsibilities
– Jal kal: operation and maintenance of waterworks including
mini tube wells, overhead tanks, tank cleaning andsupply of
water through tankers
•

8. Institutions and gender: challenges
and opportunities
Indian Railways
• 14 railway colonies, full-time railway staff take care of cleanliness therein,
huge shortage of manpower
• Sanctioned positions are 400 while 130 are currently employed
• Waste disposal functions are fully outsourced
• Cleanliness of yard and circulating areas outsourced

9. Institutions and gender: challenges
and opportunities
District Urban Development Authority
• Community toilet out of focus now
• Drainage facility created in slums
• Missing unit of toilets in constructed houses is contributed
• In-situ constructions mostly
Public Health Centre
• As 30 per cent of population do not have toilets
• Cholera, malaria and diarrhoea are common
• ANM spreads awareness through Village Health Nutrition Committees on
Wednesday and Saturday
• ANMs work in municipal areas as well

10. Institutions and gender: challenges
and opportunities
Varanasi Mughalsarai and Ramnagar Urban Development Authority
• Limited role of Mughalsarai NNP in the planning of urban area
• Master Plan was on display at NNP for recording objection at the time of
fieldwork
Informal Waste Collectors
• Collect, Segregate and sell recyclable solid waste to local traders
• Who further process them and send them to regional and national centres
for waste recycling
• Biodegradable waste is usually not picked by them
• They pick only those waste which can be sold

11. Institutions and gender: challenges
and opportunities
Unnao
• Administrative HQ of Unnao Dist.
• It is a class I municipality since 1966
• The coverage of toilets in NPP Unnao is around 83 %, where as for Slum
areas the it is around 60 %
• Drainage system is mostly kuchha and are of both open and closed types
• Availability of toilets has considerable linkage with availability of tap
water points

12. Institutions and gender: challenges
and opportunities
Institutions
NPP Unnao
• Sanitation and Health: A little over 340 Safai Karmacharis, out of them 127
are full-time government employees. Rest are hired on contract directly by
them or hired through a contractor
• Jal kal: It is part of municipality. Operations and maintenance of drinking
water infrastructure Maintenance of vehicles and machines for drinking
water is also done by them.
Jal Nigam
• Planning and Construction of sewerage system and STPs.
Informal Waste Collectors
• Collect, Segregate and sell recyclable solid waste to local traders
• Mostly women and children
Unnao Shuklaganj Development Authoriy
• little co-ordination with the Urban local body, negligible role of NPP in
planning

13. Institutions and gender: challenges
and opportunities
Gangaghat
• Small town on the bank of the Ganga, on the outskirts of Kanpur
• 84% households have toilets with less than 1 % of them connected to piped
sewer system
• Around 10% of the population lives in Slums
NPP Gangaghat
• Main decision making authority for provision of sanitation services in the town
• Decides priorities n sanitation in the area in council meetings
• Small permanent staff with municipality
Informal Waste Collectors
• Have considerable stakes and opportunities in promoting RRR practices
• Rag pickers (many children) are vulnerable to exploitative masters and
hazardous work conditions
Local Community Based Organization
• Awareness creation and community participation for safe sanitation and
hygienic practices. A local civil society organization works on preventing
pollution of Ganga

14. Institutions and gender: challenges
and opportunities
Gender Related Issues
• Women as unpaid care providers ( custodian of sanitation and cleanliness at
household level)
– Supervision of household waste disposal
– Identification of reusable waste
– Sale or disposal of non-reusable waste
• Women as informal waste pickers
– Usually from the poorest households
– Substantial part of them from migrant households
– Supplementary sources of earning to household
– No social protection
– No support to take care of health hazards due to handling of waste

15. Institutions and gender: challenges
and opportunities
• Role of women as elected representative of the Ward
– 1/3 of ward councilors are women
– President of Municipality in Mughalsarai is women
– Hardly any evidence of gender orientation
– Programmes/activities do not have any strategy for
mainstreaming/orienting them on gender related issues
• Women as member of the society
– Orientation of women helps/harms the cause of good sanitation
conditions
– Can contribute to preparedness for segregation and processing of
waste
– Socialisation of Young for a healthy sanitation regime
– Can build pressure on the family for this

16. Institutions and gender: challenges
and opportunities
Recommendations
• Solid Waste Management can be a profitable activity
• Community based/decentralised models should be preferred against
centralized models
– Decentralised models are easy to manage
– It reduces risks of dysfunction/disorder in waste management system
in any town
– Cooperatives of waste pickers, NGOs or SHGs could also be involved in
the activity
– It should be attempted on pilot basis in a few places
– Incentive structure with tapering off grant be developed
– Municipal staff supervising profitable projects for segregation and
value addition of solid waste should also be incentivised

17. Institutions and gender: challenges
and opportunities
• Guidelines on the basis of Supreme Court committee recommendations
should be propagated far and wide in these towns so that people start
owning them up
• Targeting women and men councillor for awareness based on SC
recommendations on solid waste management
• Informal waste pickers should be involved in the larger strategy for a
better sanitation regime in these towns
• Better condition (hygienic and healthy) of work should be created for
them
• By involving informal actors we segregate and reuse some part of waste
• Pilot projects for engaging informal actors with municipalities should be
developed and experimented with

18. Institutions and gender: challenges
and opportunities
• Universal sewerage is a requirement in towns
• It however does not seem possible in foreseeable future
• STP should therefore also be combined with open drains and tertiary
treatment of in-house toilets (including that of septic latrines) should be
done to avoid further contamination of Ganga
• Lining of open drains is also an important necessity as groundwater is very
high and seepage from unlined drains leads to contamination of
groundwater
• Municipalities should work towards restoring natural drainage lines in
these towns. In view of encroachments and mafias in towns this becomes
difficult for NPP. Therefore, municipal authorities should be empowered to
handle it more effectively.

19. Institutions and gender: challenges
and opportunities
• State finance Commission and 13th finance commission recommendations are
biggest contributors to municipalities resources
• Own sources of revenue are not substantial
• Allocations in the last few years have however not been utilised
• This is mainly due to understaffing and hence manpower not being available
to upgrade intervention level of the programme or activities
• Infrastructure upgradation will also require substantially more investments
• Empowerment of women councillors/men councillors to handle gender issues
is an absolute must
• Technical capacity of municipality should be upgraded to handle STPs and do a
whole lot of other things
• Formation of ward committees for smaller towns should also be done
• Citizens will then have a direct role in managing its own affairs
• Municipality should have a central role in planning on sanitation issues
• Municipality should also be the nodal agency for preventing Ganga pollution in
small towns

20. Thank you