Recasting Sanitation: Urban–Rural Partnerships
Recasting Sanitation: Urban–Rural Partnerships
Sanitation lies at the heart of public health, environmental sustainability, and human dignity. India’s sanitation journey—galvanised by the Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM)—has achieved notable milestones such as near-universal toilet coverage and significant behavioural change. However, the sanitation challenge today has moved beyond toilet construction to safe management of waste across the rural–urban continuum. In this context, recasting sanitation through urban–rural partnerships emerge as a strategic necessity rather than a policy option.
The Changing Nature of Sanitation Challenges
Traditionally, sanitation planning treated rural and urban areas as distinct and self-contained units. However, rapid urbanisation, peri-urban expansion, and circular migration have blurred these boundaries. Urban areas increasingly depend on rural hinterlands for waste disposal, water sources, and labour, while rural areas bear the environmental and health externalities of poorly managed urban waste.
For instance, untreated urban sewage often finds its way into rural water bodies, affecting agriculture and drinking water quality. Similarly, solid waste dumps and faecal sludge treatment plants are frequently located in rural or peri-urban zones without adequate consultation or compensation. This spatial mismatch between waste generation and waste burden underscores the need for integrated sanitation governance.
Limitations of the Current Sanitation Framework
Despite the success of SBM-Urban and SBM-Gramin, several structural gaps persist:
- Fragmented governance: Urban Local Bodies (ULBs) and Panchayati Raj Institutions (PRIs) operate in silos with limited coordination.
- Faecal Sludge and Septage Management (FSSM) gaps: Over 60% of urban households rely on on-site sanitation systems, yet safe desludging and treatment infrastructure remains inadequate, often shifting the burden to rural areas.
- Fiscal and capacity asymmetry: ULBs possess relatively better financial and technical capacity than PRIs, leading to unequal sanitation outcomes.
- Environmental injustice: Rural communities disproportionately face pollution from urban waste without benefiting from urban economic growth.
These limitations indicate that sanitation is no longer a purely local issue but a regional public good requiring cooperative framework.
Urban–Rural Partnerships: The Conceptual Shift
Urban–rural sanitation partnerships involve shared planning, financing, infrastructure, and accountability mechanisms across jurisdictions. Such partnerships recognise the sanitation value chain—from waste generation to treatment and reuse—as a continuous system cutting across administrative boundaries.
Key elements of this approach include:
- Regional sanitation planning at the district or metropolitan level.
- Shared treatment infrastructure, such as common faecal sludge treatment plants.
- Resource recovery models, converting waste into compost, biogas, or treated water for rural agriculture.
- Institutional collaboration between ULBs, PRIs, and district administrations.
Emerging Good Practices
India has already witnessed promising examples of urban–rural sanitation convergence:
- Tamil Nadu and Odisha have implemented cluster-based FSSM models, where multiple small towns and surrounding villages share treatment facilities.
- Devanahalli (Karnataka) uses treated wastewater from Bengaluru for rural irrigation, reducing freshwater stress.
- GOBARdhan initiative promotes biogas and organic manure production through urban organic waste, benefiting rural livelihoods.
Internationally, countries like Japan and the Netherlands have successfully adopted circular sanitation economies linking urban waste to rural productivity.
Benefits of Urban–Rural Sanitation Integration
- Public health gains: Reduced contamination of water bodies and food chains.
- Environmental sustainability: Lower groundwater pollution and improved waste recycling.
- Economic efficiency: Shared infrastructure reduces per-capita costs.
- Rural empowerment: Generates income through compost, energy, and service provision.
- Social equity: Distributes sanitation burdens and benefits more fairly.
Challenges to Implementation
Despite its promise, urban–rural sanitation partnerships face several obstacles:
- Jurisdictional conflicts between ULBs and PRIs.
- Financing complexities, especially cost-sharing and revenue models.
- Community resistance to waste treatment facilities in rural areas.
- Capacity deficits in planning, operation, and monitoring at the local level.
Addressing these challenges requires strong political will and institutional innovation.
Way Forward
To effectively recast sanitation through urban–rural partnerships, the following steps are essential:
- Policy integration: Embed urban–rural sanitation convergence in SBM 2.0 and AMRUT guidelines.
- Regional governance platforms: Establish district-level sanitation authorities for coordinated planning.
- Fiscal incentives: Encourage inter-jurisdictional cooperation through performance-linked grants.
- Capacity building: Strengthen PRIs and small-town ULBs with technical and managerial support.
- Community participation: Ensure transparency, consultation, and benefit-sharing with rural communities.
- Circular economy focus: Promote reuse of treated wastewater and biosolids in agriculture and industry.
Conclusion
Sanitation in the 21st century cannot be confined within administrative boundaries. As India aspires for sustainable urbanisation and inclusive rural development, urban–rural partnerships offer a transformative pathway to address sanitation challenges holistically. Recasting sanitation through such partnerships not only ensures environmental justice and public health security but also aligns with the constitutional vision of cooperative federalism and sustainable development. The success of India’s next sanitation revolution will depend on how effectively it bridges the urban–rural divide—turning waste into a shared resource and sanitation into a shared responsibility.
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