Ending national scourge

Will an estimated Rs 1.40 trillion investment for the construction of 130 million toilets rid the countryside of open defecation?

Within a month of its launch, the Swachh Bharat Abhiyaan (SBA) is on an upward swing to transform people’s attitude towards open defecation. From projecting it on a slew of top television shows, such as Satyamev Jayate and Comedy Nights with Kapil, to creating new ‘behavioural change ads’, change in tactics to implement the SBA has raised hope of putting an end to the national scourge amid stinking despair. 

The compelling question, however, is: whether an estimated Rs 1.40 trillion investment towards constructing some 130 million household toilets will rid the countryside of open defecation? It could be anybody’s guess given the fact that 45 per cent of the households with toilets have at least one person defecating in the open. A sample study of over 3,200 rural households in Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh stands testimony to it.  

Is it the case of “old habits die hard”? Not quite, as researchers have found that the dingy toilet with insufficient lighting is cause enough for people to seek solace out in the open, which according to celebrated writer VS Naipaul, was an escape from the fear of claustrophobia within a closet. Many of those who opt to go out in the open do so because sensory faculties of humans miss out on the need for engagement of some kind in the isolation of a toilet. 

Changing human behaviour has multiple dimensions, more so when there isn’t any credible evidence linking toilet coverage to better health conditions. Consequently, radical social change may not be achieved by imposing new ideological position alone. Eliminating open defecation is undoubtedly good politics, but for the SBA to succeed, the government would need more than just pulling the levers of many departments to work together. 

When it comes to the subtle question of behaviour change, centralised approach to alter socially unacceptable behaviour has often come a cropper because government departments are neither trained nor capable of engineering shifts in social behaviour. Doing it right needs a significant shift in business-as-usual approach. Working closely with people, understanding how they are thinking will involve a ‘nudge’ rather than a push.

And, nudge works better than push as has been demonstrated at Schipol International Airport in Amsterdam. Despite behaviour change messages plastered all over, spill over inside airport urinals by throngs of travellers had posed serious public-health problem in addition to offering an unpleasant sight. An ingenious economist resolved the crisis by etching an image of a black house fly onto the bowls of the airport’s urinals, just to the left of the drain. 

Nudge hypothesis

Surprisingly, spillage declined by 80 per cent and the message it delivered turns out that, if you give men a target they can only aim at it. Such fly-etched urinal bowls can now be seen at major airports in the country as well. Nudge hypothesis is now a major area of behavioural research, creating a mix of software and hardware solutions to a range of difficult situations, from encouraging households on waste recycling to inspiring people to donate organs. 

As a strategy, nudge has found practical applications for governments to apply the emerging doctrines of behavioural economics. The nudge strategy has demonstrated that for governments to be cost-effective, it should do more steering and less rowing.Confronted with the challenge of administering behaviour change policies, nudge has found favours from all sides of the political spectrum.

 President Obama appointed Cass Sunstein, author of Nudge, to head the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. In France, the Centre for Strategic Analysis of the Prime Minister has employed a behaviour science expert, Oliver Oullier, as an advisor on behaviour change policies. The trend has caught on. 

Modi has rightly selected changing sanitation behaviour as a headline priority and has the cases of illustrious heads of the states worth emulating. Widespread political support on the other hand offers a great opportunity to rid a problem that is worth 6.4 per cent of GDP due to productivity loss. Nothing could be more urgent than the fact that Rs 20,000 crore spent on sanitation programmes since 1999 has added to the numbers of open defecators in India. 

That China has eliminated open defecation, and neighbouring Bangladesh and Nepal have taken rapid strides to reach the goal of total sanitation coverage may not offer any easy solutions. The diversity of our vast cultural landscape and its immense economic disparity warrants varied solutions to the same problem at different locations. Therefore, the need is to get a fresh measure of the problem after discounting past failures. 

The question that begs an answer is: why toilet is not a priority for millions of households? Is decision-making conditioned by the cognitive limitations of the human mind? It is the understanding of human psychology that the government machinery would need help in getting a sense of, before devising strategies for providing context-specific choice architecture for people as there is a subtle distinction between a toilet and the idea of a toilet. 

The challenge before the policymakers would be to engage with behavioural economists to create conditions such that open defecators not only reflect upon their choices and dilemmas but are encouraged to throw away their blinkers, too. Luckily, the government has the political will and has caught the attention of the masses. But the five-year period also does not offer the luxury of time in changing the dirty picture!    
       (The writer is an independent researcher on water and sanitation issues)