Poor Leadership-Counting Numbers, Still!

Another day for recognizing toilets or boasting ourselves! And by the way, by whom?

Are they not in a race to promote, recognize, and prove that their perks are worth the spend, and asking for more? They range from corporations and businesses to NGOs and international agencies! All of them today are vouching for their efforts to support national and provincial governments in developing countries.

They talk about celebrities as ‘sanitation’ brand ambassadors! Some are given funds to get a piece of paper signed in the name of the world these groups are looking at, for ‘World We Want 2015’ (actually they want) on the table of buffet lunch and snacks! A few are piloting by pouring money collected in the name of ‘global sanitation’, which is really in the process of corporatizing community approaches.

On the other hand, our state and national governments are counting numbers! They are grappling with the numbers they have in hand! The monitoring system has failed miserably. In the Indian context, the NFHS (National Family Health Survey), in real sense a health survey, didn’t reveal the real picture, so Joint Monitoring Programme still doesn’t have a clue about what they are counting! Toilets, users or both! No agency could really help our governments on how to improve the status, count these structures, and keep them sustainable!

As usual, approaches are discussed, funds utilized, and reports written! Business goes on…!

The sanitation approaches from IEC and BCC are further researched for unknown failure! There are others who are selling their patent-like approaches, which are not yielding results due to poor implementation approach, poor foresightedness, and sustenance issues.

Developing countries like India have become a research ground for a few researchers to misuse funds in the name of sanitation research, while they play around with words like community-led, wise water, sanitation-led stunting, among others!

The real takers and beneficiaries are still struggling with other priorities, and it seems that they are not convinced with any of these approaches.

In my view, there is poor leadership in the sanitation sector itself! And each one of us knows that when poor leaders lead the scene, the results can’t be expected to be great!

Have a happy World Toilet Era!