ACCESS TO WATER AND SANITATION
Changing The Social Status
The experiences of disadvantaged communities in rural and urban Nepal show how access to pure drinking water and sanitation facilities can transform the livelihood of the people. Cleanliness enhances social prestige and makes people healthier giving more opportunity to integrate with other communities in education and economic activities. For some backward communities in eastern Nepal, pure drinking water and sanitation facilities helps to end day-to-day life of isolation and integrate with other communities. Living in unhygienic surroundings without basic sanitation and pure drinking water and facing discrimination on the basis of caste and economic status for centuries, access to pure drinking water and sanitation brings about good health, wealth and social prestige
By KESHAB POUDEL
For backward and dalit communities of Khatwe tole of Babiya Village Development Committee, 400 kilometer east of capital Kathmandu, it was beyond imagination that simply changing their surroundings could transform their life in such a manner that the isolated and neglected village can become a model to other settlements in the areas.
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A mother and her child : Tapped water available now
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The villagers used open space for toilets, drank the contaminated water of nearby wells and tube wells and extracted water from nearby dirty ponds to wash clothes and use them for household purposes. They used the open space to throw garbage and dirt.
This resulted in frequent cases of diarrhea, dysentery, jaundice and other diseases. School going children spent most of their time either in health post or at home and family spent a lot of their income in health. Among others, nearby communities of upper caste saw these dalit settlement as origin of all the dirt and diseases.
Many generations of communities in Khatwe tole passed away totally disconnected from other upper class communities with very low number of literacy and rampant poverty.
The small intervention by NEWAH (Nepal Water for Health) and Plan International through supporting drinking water and sanitation program brought about a substantial change in the village.
This is what one can see in the life of Jashodha Sharma, 18, a resident of Babiya Village Development Committee of Khatwe Tole who had never imagined construction of a toilet and tube well for drinking water could enhance their prestige and social status.
Just after cleaning their settlement and constructing toilets and cleaning water sources around the village have turned the dirtiest settlement of the area into a model for other settlements of nearby communities.
“I was so delighted when upper class communities in nearby settlements invited me and other members of village to learn about how to improve the sanitation and improve the quality of drinking water,” said Sharma. “We are able to change our social status just within a couple of years, which our fathers and grand fathers were unable to change for centuries.”
With 57 households, the per capita income of the residents of Khatwe tole, a dalit settlement, which was regarded as the dirtiest place in the village – is lowest in the area as majority of the people living in the villages don’t have agriculture land.
Due to age old tradition of cultural discrimination, denial of education rights and social exclusion, people in the settlements used to throw garbage everywhere and were forced to drink the contaminated water. “Majority of the ponds were dirty and they used unsafe water from tube-well for drinking. People used all open spaces as toilet. As a result, the village suffered from diarrhea, dysentery, jaundice. Because of this, each household spent around Rs. 2000 (US$30) a year on medicines,” said Sharma.
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A lady farmer irrigating land : Water for agriculture
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After changing old practicing practices and replacing them with new ideas including using soap to wash hands after using toilet and cleaning the drinking water tap has not only transformed the settlement but also enhanced the social status of Khatwe.
According to the World Bank’s Country Assistance Strategy 2004-007, with approximately 85 percent of the total population living in rural areas, poverty is largely rural phenomenon. “There are significant ethnic and caste based disparities in what is recognized as a largely pluralistic society with diverse ethnic, caste linguistic and religious communities. Most of the dalit population is disadvantaged and there is striking caste and ethnicity based disparities.”
Clean and hygienic environment is one of the basic traditional criteria of social stratification. It is widely held view that dalits live in unhygienic place in unclean the dirty surroundings.
At a time when the government is spending huge amount of money to end the social discrimination and improvement of health and hygienic, people of Khatwe community have made it clear that a very nominal investment can transform a community.
Khatwe is not the single settlement in Nepal where sanitation and supply of drinking water brought such changes. One can see how the supply of pure drinking water and well planned sanitation can transform the life of community in squatter settlement in the capital also. After implementation of sanitation and drinking water programs in the squatter settlement and slums in Kathmandu valley, the statuses as well as lives of these areas have greatly transformed.
Living in areas full of filthy garbage, open sewerage and contaminated ground water, majority of urban poor and dalits are discriminated against by nearby communities. Communities are divided between hygienic and unhygienic, resulting in widening cultural and social gap.
Although the construction of new concrete buildings and black-top roads have changed the physical surroundings of a small dalit community of Kumbeshwor, 10 kilometer south of capital, construction of sanitation facilities and water supply tap has transformed their social status and improved the health.
“Although majority of people in communities still work as sweepers, the attitude of other high class communities towards us has changed. I am sending my children to nearby boarding schools where he has been studying with the children of other communities,” said Ramcha Nepali, 40. “Thirty years ago, it was beyond imagination that our communities would have water taps and sanitation and my children would go to school.”
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Water for hygiene : Good habit results in good health
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With the support from Lalitpur Sub-Metropolitan and local NGO, the dalits of Kumbeshwor had constructed the toilets as well as connected their home with drinking water supply. In the last one decade, the situation of the slums and squatter areas of Kathmandu valley has drastically changed. Compared to the national average, slums and squatter settlements in the valley have almost hundred percent toilets now.
Construction of toilets and tap water at home enhanced the dignity of poor people. As people receive the social and cultural recognition through sanitation, there is rush among disadvantaged communities of all walk of life to do so. Separate toilets and clean drinking water taps is a symbol of new prosperity in the disadvantaged communities in Nepal .
” In the past, only rich and upper caste communities used to have toilets and drinking water tap. Now almost all houses in our communities have it,” said Ramcha Nepali. “I realize now that lack of sanitation and drinking water were two major components that pushed us in backwardness and social discriminations. As soon as we have made efforts to be clean, our social status has changed.”
Although the access to sanitation and drinking water has increased drastically over the years, there are still large number of household in rural and urban areas which don’t have pure drinking water supply and toilets.
“Many urban population in Nepal have inadequate provision of water, sanitation and drainage system which contribute to very large disease burden and hundreds of thousands of premature deaths each year,” said Sanjaya Adhikary, country representatives of Water Aid Nepal . “In slums and squatter settlements, whose deprivation is hidden behind national average, there are specific problems relating to water and sanitation provision.”
As the only INGO in Nepal that exclusively focuses on enhancing access of the poor and vulnerable communities to safe water, affordable sanitation and improved hygiene behavior practices, Water Aid Nepal is uniquely positioned to support and to contribute to the implementation of national priorities and sector reforms through increased civil society participation, said Adhikary.
According to Human Development Report 2006, Nepal falls in the category of countries with sanitation coverage of less than 40 percent and inequality in water provision relates not just to access and expenditure but also to price.
Statistics show that approximately 81 percent of the total population in the country currently obtain drinking water from improved facilities. According to United Nations Development Program, the overall coverage of sanitation went up from 6 percent in 1990 to 46.8 percent in 2001.
Like other parts of the world, the poor have less access to water for life in Nepal for domestic use and sanitation. We see examples of this everyday in Nepal at community water taps where lower-caste people are forced to wait until upper caste groups have finished. Here the less powerful, who are also often the poorest , spend more time colleting water, which means they have less time for income generating activities that could pull them out of poverty. At the same time education opportunities are being lost, as girls are spending time collecting water when they should be at school.
“Access to clean water and sanitation are among the most powerful drivers for human development. They extend opportunity, enhance dignity and help create a virtuous cycle of improving health and rising wealth,” said Matthew Kahane, UNDP Resident Representative. “Undermining Nepal ’s efforts to meet several of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) particularly reducing poverty and improving education are the unresolved challenge that access to water and sanitation at present.”
Recent studies have shown that water and sanitation are directly related to the poverty. Poorer the people are, lesser access to sanitation and drinking water. This is the reason the government has made water and sanitation as one of the major sector in poverty alleviation.
Easy access to drinking water also reduces the burden of women and improves the health condition of children. “Access to safe drinking water and basis sanitation is a poverty reduction strategy’s priority,” said Dr. Jagdish Chandra Pokharel, vice chairman of National Planning Commission. “Our aim is to raise water supply coverage to 85 percent and availability of sanitation facilities to 50 percent of the total population by 2007.”
However, it must be noted that significant disparities exist in access to water and sanitation, in spite of the rapid expansion of the last fifteen years. According to Nepal Millennium Development Goals Progress Report 2005 in Nepal, the richest quintile is 13 times more likely to have piped water in their home than the poorest quintile (39 percent vs. 3 percent ) and are nearly eight times more likely to have improved sanitation (79 percent vs. 10 percent). Over the years, the gap between the urban and rural areas has been narrowed in terms of access to water and sanitation coverage.
Increasing drinking water and sanitation skills are crucial for achieving the health sector’s MDGs and child health in particular. Decentralization and localization may help to raise the quality of service provided locally by various donor agencies and NGOs. As per Water Aid Nepal 2004 estimates, if each VDC out of the total 3913 VDCs in Nepal provided additional water and sanitation service to only five household every month, the water and sanitation MDG targets would be met.
The Millennium Development Target (MDT) is to halve the proportion of people without access to drinking water and sanitation in 1990 by the year 2015. Based on Water Aid Nepal (WAN), a Britain based International Non-governmental Organization, estimates; the MDT will hence be to reach 63 percent in rural areas and 85 percent in urban areas for drinking water within the reasonable distance of 15 minutes. The corresponding figure for sanitation will be 57 percent in rural and 80 percent in urban areas.
To reach the sanitation target, an additional 14,000 households need to be served per month between 2000 and 2015 and an additional 11,300 households need to be served per month to reach the drinking water target.
“Our works even inspired other communities out of our districts. We got health, wealth and prestige not making money but following some basic things like using toilets, cleaning the water sources like wells, constructing platforms around the tube wells, covering foods and cleaning the roads,” said Sharma. “To discourage inappropriate hygienic conditions; the children started blowing whistles and chasing people who still performed toilets outside the houses and in the villages.”
Although sanitation can bring about substantial changes in society and transform the social order, it has always been a low priority program area, never receiving attention and resources to make any significant improvement.
