Incentivizing Sanitation Uptake and Sustainable Usage through Microfinance : Endline Report

According to the most recent joint monitoring program report for water and sanitation, sanitation coverage and usage has significantly progressed globally. The use of basic sanitation services has increased steadily between 2000 and 2015. India topped the world ranking in terms of the number of people still practicing open defecation, with almost 40 percent of the population having no access to sanitation facilities. Lack of improved sanitation can have disastrous consequences. The government of India (GoI) has shown strong commitment to improving sanitation, starting with the establishment of the Total sanitation campaign in 1999. This study proposes to shed light on innovative ways of increasing the uptake and usage of safe sanitation practices through a cluster randomized controlled trial designed and implemented in 120 Gram panchayats (GPs) in rural Maharashtra, India. The report is structured as follows. The authors begin by providing details on the context, and a detailed description of the interventions in Section 2. Section 3 outlines the research questions that the evaluation addresses, while Section 4 provides details on the evaluation design, including the power calculations and details on the study sample and data. Thereafter, they present the results in Section 5, starting with the main outcomes toilet uptake, toilet quality and toilet usage, followed by a discussion of observed mechanisms and concluding by targeting results and interactions with SBM(G). Section 6 provides a discussion of the findings and concludes.