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Water Champion: Joe Madiath
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Mr. Joe Madiath is the Executive Director of Gram Vikas, one of the largest NGOs in the state of Orissa in India. Gram Vikas reaches out to about 25,000 indigenous and poor families living in 450 rural habitations. Some of the pioneering efforts of Gram Vikas have been in biogas promotion, community forestry, rural habitat development and education. Gram Vikas' current approach to convergent community action with water and sanitation as the entry point is evolving into a movement that influences local democratic self-governance and poor people's control over development processes. Gram Vikas and Mr. Madiath have received several national and international awards in recognition of their work, including the Allan Shawn Feinstein World Hunger Award for 1995-96 from Brown University, USA; the Most Innovative Development Project Award 2001 from the Global Development Network and the World Habitat Award 2003 for Gram Vikas' Rural Health and Environment Programme. In 2005, Mr. Madiath was awarded the Social Lifetime Achievement Award for Social Services from The Godfrey Phillips Red & White Bravery Awards for his contribution in improving the plight of the rural masses. |
My work has always exposed me to huge sufferings and high death tolls caused by poor sanitation and polluted drinking water-from the refugee camps of those who flocked to India in the wake of East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) splitting away from West Pakistan, to the refugee camps of victims hit by cyclones in Orissa.
In 1978, I also worked on a project in the Cuttack District of Orissa which provided good quality toilets for every family in the village. We assumed that people would bring the water needed for the toilets from nearby hand-pumps. But this job was relegated to the wife, daughter or daughter in law. One day, one daughter "accidentally" dropped a small stone in the U-trap of the toilet, making it unusable. Pretty soon, similar accidents were taking place in other households, and it wasn't long before people went back to using open fields for their sanitation needs. Our lesson was clear. If water-based toilets are to function, we need to make sure running water is available.
In 1992, over 80% of morbidity and mortality in rural Orissa can be attributed to drinking water polluted by unsafe disposal of human waste. As head of Gram Vikas, I was in a position to improve things. As of March 2005, our group has completed work in, and built the capacity of, 211 villages, each household equipped with toilets, bath rooms, and 3 taps each with 24 hour water supply.
We forged a solid partnership with the villages. Gram Vikas contributed towards what we consider social costs, e.g. cement, steel, pan, and door. In turn, each village raised a corpus of Rs. 1,000 or so, with the poor giving less and the better off giving more. This corpus is actually an acid test to see if people can set their differences apart and work together. The corpus is invested in an interest earning deposit and used to pay the social costs of new families moving to the village in the future.
We also emphasized social inclusion. All families in a village built the same type of toilets and bathrooms, regardless of their economic, social and caste considerations. Each family also had to contribute local materials, labor and some cash. We conducted masonry training for unskilled boys and girls, who then constructed the toilets after their training.
From a safe water source, water is pumped up to an overhead water tank and distributed to every toilet, bathroom and kitchen. Wherever possible, we used gravity flow mechanisms to fill up the overhead water tank, especially in tribal and hilly regions.
The villages take up pisciculture in what used to be the bathing pond, and planted vegetation in wastelands to generate income. This income is used for operation and maintenance expenses. If the income isn't enough, the villages contribute another 0.5% or 1% of the gross product at harvest time. Again, the contributions are socialized.
Except for the initial social costs, the community shoulders all the expenses. Women have a large role in decision making, as well as a separate body for discussing issues critical to them. Social pressure mechanisms such as fines and monitoring schemes ensure 100% usage and maintenance of the toilets.
As with many pioneering work, we had to fight against the current mindset both of the local governments and the communities. Many thought this model was too utopian, too costly, not sustainable nor replicable. Worse, they thought rural people did not need running water, and that substandard and tardy interventions were all they deserved. By contributing most of the costs, and maintaining the operations, the rural communities proved that these views weren't necessarily true.
Beyond the problems of perception, we also had tangible constraints. Money, of course, was an issue. Too, it generally takes a long time for a village to solve its internal conflicts enough to work together. Many communities also found it difficult to accept that women needed to be included in the decision making process. And the technology for building water towers and distribution lines was the monopoly of engineers and technocrats; we had to demystify this technology first for the rural populace so that they will have the confidence to use and manage it.
So far, we've completed this program in 211 villages, and work is ongoing in 400 other villages. For the villages that completed the project, more than 95% are operating successfully. Most of these villages are tribal and dalit, really the poorest of the poor, which makes their success all the more incredible. In none of these villages has the system collapsed, and Gram Vikas never had to pay for any maintenance.
Community commitment plays a key role in the success of the 211 villages. The community members give until it hurts, and so they take care of the system afterwards. The rather long hand-holding process we take-working with the villages from three to five years after the system is set up-ensures this commitment as well.
The corpus is also a good tool. We've started using it as collateral to source more funds from financing institutions, and we use these new funds to start village industries so that there is no unemployed person in the village.
We still have a long way to go, though. People recognize that ours is a good but difficult model. There's no rush to embrace this model yet because there are no freebies. With more successes, though, we hope to gain more social and political acceptance, enough to mainstream it in various parts of the country.
We would like to reach 120,000 families in about 1,000 villages by 2010. We know this can only happen by networking with like-minded civil society groups operating in Orissa. We would also like to take this scheme to other parts of India — especially to Jharkhand, Chhatisgarh, Madhya Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh — in partnership with other NGOs who have expressed interest in our approach.
Indian statistics could tell us that anyone who has received 3 ferro cement rings and a squatting block has access to sanitation. If this is taken as the indicator, India might reach the sanitation target of the Millennium Development Goals. This might be of help in areas where some sort of sanitary toilets are part of the culture - like Kerala, West Bengal, parts of Tamil Nadu, parts of Gujarat, Maharashtra, etc,. But for the rest of India, where open defecation is the norm, this approach will not have a telling effect on sanitation. I think probably less than 5% of the people who get these rings and block ever install or use them for the purpose for which they were given.
People need to have to have a radical shift in their cultural practice of disposing of human waste. We need to understand that this practice is not only a health hazard, but also a black spot on human dignity. And we need to take charge of our water supply and sanitation needs, not wait for the government to provide everything.
And once people, even the poorest of the poor, realize the benefits they get from taking charge of their water supply and sanitation needs, they can and will pay for sustaining these services.
At the end of the day, neither missiles and motorcades, nor cars and computers, can confer prestige on nations without taps and toilets.
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