Regional Centre for Environmental and Urban Studies (RCUES), Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh

On December 28, 2019, Society for Participatory Research In Asia (PRIA) in collaboration with RCUES organized a day-long State Consultation on “Putting Citizens at the Centre: Sustaining Improved Urban Sanitation Services in Uttar Pradesh” at RCUES conference hall, Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh.

In Uttar Pradesh there are 652 urban local bodies including 17 municipal corporations. Under SBM, the state has made significant progress; however, it confronts multidimensional issues in urban sanitation such as lack of segregation at source, low processing of solid waste generated including organic waste and plastics waste, lack of decentralised community oriented processing of waste, low coverage of safe waste water conveyance and treatment systems etc. These issues need to be tackled at various stages of development of service delivery like policy, planning, implementation and operations/ maintenance.

The state level consultation explored solutions on the prevailing issues in urban sanitation sector of Uttar Pradesh centred on citizen engagement and multi-stakeholder partnerships. The main objective was to share good examples of change from the cities of Uttar Pradesh and appraise ULBs on methods for participatory planning and monitoring for inclusive sanitation services in the state.

The consultation attempted to find answers to some pertinent questions such as how do we sustain the progress achieved as a result of SBM? How do we deal with the challenges of septic tank management and ODF++? Now that the toilets have been constructed, how do we manage faecal sludge and for that what should be the preparedness level of the ULBs? What kind of capacities should the CSOs have? What are the responsibilities of academic institutions? How do we increase people participation in all these areas and what all do we need to do to make this sustainable?

Responding to these questions it was emphasized that unless a government programme is integrated with citizen movement by promoting local leadership, achieving its desired objectives might be very difficult. For example, if organic waste is completely segregated at individual level and its composting is carried out in a decentralised manner then the municipalities may save resources on everyday waste collection. For this partnership and collaboration with citizen is crucial.

The ECRC project being implemented in Jhansi since 2016 attempted to create citizen centric improvement in urban sanitation service demand and delivery. A number of successful experiments on promoting citizen engagement such as creation of settlement improvement and citizen forums in the city of Jhansi was shared. In addition to this a number of city wide campaigns and their strategies that brought the authorities and people of Jhansi city to dialogue and action were discussed. Members of SICs and Citizen Forum spoke in detail about their work in Jhansi.  

The event was attended by the representatives of ULBs from across the state such as Kannauj, Agra, Jhansi, Bijnor, Shamli, Firozabad, Moradabad, Loni etc. Mayor of Lucknow also attended the workshop and appreciated the Jhansi model of citizen engagement on the issue of urban sanitation and suggested that it should be adopted in Lucknow and other cities of the state. Dr Nishith Rai, Director, RCUES and other participants hopeful that Jhansi model of citizen engagement could be scaled up at the state level to improve and sustain the solutions for urban sanitation in the state.