Pivotal Problems in FSSM

At the core of all systemic challenges, there are a few problems that hinder a systemic change, limit someone from bringing a change, or cause the system to collapse. The identified pivotal problems are:

Absence of well-defined standards for sanitation

Current standards do not cover all aspects of sanitation and service delivery, for instance, standards of treated human waste, treatment plant technologies, and benchmarks, etc. The ecosystem has created many standards which are not formally notified or enforced.

Where standards exist, awareness and compliance are dismal for four reasons:

• Many actors in the value chain do not have the necessary knowledge, skills, or SOPs

• Complexities in service delivery result in incomplete or improper service.

• A poor requirement specification in RFPs.

• Model Contracts exist but are not followed Delays in corrective action since contracts are not tightly coupled with monitoring

Broken chain of custody from waste generation to reuse

Systemic data either doesn’t exist or remains disjointed to understand how much waste exists, where, when, with whom, and why. FS tends to drop out of the value chain, untreated, it is important to know who dropped it, when, how, or where it ended up polluting the environment. The unavailability of this information hampers corrective and preventive measures.

Availability of verifiable and trusted data at various levels of aggregation to all actors

Data around FS (how much, where, when, who is responsible) is too little, too late. Required data is not created, available, or shared across relevant ecosystem actors Data is not actionable. The performance of sanitation systems remains opaque and unobservable.

India is not poised to convert waste to value, yet

Current systems are not structured to maximize the value from FS and related services. The policy framework doesn’t recognize treated human excreta as compost Unclear and fragmented demand for treated waste contributes to lax operations upstream.

Stakeholder behaviour is often misaligned with safe sanitation practices

• Citizens favour open defecation, construct improper containment units, and ask sanitation workers to clean the tank from inside for extra money.

• Sanitation workers do not actively use PPEs.

• Farmers refrain from using treated waste as manure due to associated stigma.