As per the presentation that was given by Mr. J.S.Mathur,
Joint Secretary, Department of Drinking Water & Sanitation, MoRD on 22
June, 2011 the discrepancy between people who have access to toilets and those
who have functional toilets are pretty high in all states. According to him,
79% of the people in NGP villages in Tamil Nadu have access to toilets but only
61% have access to functional ones. The reasons vary from having been
constructed at the wrong location to poor installation, etc. This is only a
part of the issue of what makes rural infrastructure a challenge. Involving
local stake holders might solve some of the issues but the sustainability of
the infrastructure will depend not only on the management of stake holders
involved but also on solutions that are tailor-made for the community.
APF a video from TED Talks http://www.ted.com/talks/david_damberger_what_happens_when_an_ngo_admits_failure.html. Though the video is from the perspective of an NGO, the concept of the video
is similar to what we were discussing in class.
Focusing on the needs of the people is the main idea and it goes one
step further, introducing the concept of shifting of power to the beneficiaries
to hold the infrastructure provider accountable. Also, the idea of a failure
report for infrastructure projects is a novel idea. Would it not be worth the
effort to analyze infrastructure projects and have a compilation of lessons
learned that would prevent repetition of the same mistakes? In fact, acknowledging
the failures, and discussing/documenting them might prevent reiteration of
those mistakes and open up avenues for innovative solutions.
A classmate
of mine from DoMS is one of the founders of an innovative technology company
aimed at providing water and power to rural coastal areas at an optimal cost. The
technology used and the quality of water produced has caught the interest of soft
drinks bottling companies, who are willing to have them set up the water
treatment plants near their manufacturing units while agreeing to provide a
certain percentage of water produced on site to nearby rural villages (where there is no drinking water supply infrastructure in place) free of
cost. But there is no legal framework currently in place to support the
Robinhood like idea. So, policy reforms to address such issues could also be part of the answer.
Another interesting read: http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/india/article.cfm?articleid=4513
. As indicated in the interview by Mr. Atul Punj, efficient functioning at the
lower level of the political ladder will also play a big part in providing
sustainable rural infrastructure. This is a fact that has not been lost on the
MoRD. MoRD has proposed the idea of e-panchayats, i.e equipping the local
panchayats with IT infrastructure and thus bringing them under a unified
umbrella. The byproduct of this change would be increase in accountability of
the local body and restriction of manipulation/misuse of funds to
an extent.
1 comment:
Looking at this from a risk point of view, it is unlikely that private players will move in because the possibility of losing their investment stands quite high. The returns on such a project are unlikely to be high because of the low spending power associated with the rural population. As such, it does not seem feasible for PPPs at the moment, and falls under the purview of the government/not for profit organizations.
It is also not very feasible for soft drink companies to set up too many of these treatment plants. While it would be beneficial for a few villages, it makes no profit and therefore cannot be scaled up to all villages in India. So technically, it isn't sustainable infrastructure.
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