Bangladesh has made a lot of progress on several social indicators. One of them is the percentage of the population doing open defecation. It has dropped from 34% to 1% in less than a decade. Unlike popular belief, open defecation is not reduced by building more toilets. That is only a minor step. Cultural changes and community involvement is the secret ingredient for success. Community-led Total Sanitation (CLTS) Program is at the heart of this progress. The CLTS intervention typically starts as follows:
A CLTS Volunteer walks into a village. She engages in small talk with a few people there. She tells them that she wants to survey their locality and needs help. A small group volunteers. She asks them to show her a place where they shit. Yes, she uses that word bluntly. The group is shocked. They lead her to that site. By this time, a few more have joined the parade. She inspects the place, looks at a poop, and points to it. "Whose shit could it be?". People are embarrassed. Reluctantly, somebody puts up a hand.
She continues to ask more embarrassing questions:
Why is this poop brown while that is yellow?
Who had this watery poop?
Why are there so many flies on this pile?
At this point, people are praying that this ordeal gets over. The word has spread, and the group has turned into the crowd. She returns back to the town center. She asks people to help her map their village on the ground. A few people volunteer and do it. She asks them to locate a few landmarks like the temple, school, their homes, market on the map. They place stones to identify them.
She then pulls out a bag from her backpack. It has yellow chalk powder in it. She asks a few kids to sprinkle the yellow powder on the map where they defecate. The kids enjoy this activity and liberally sprinkle. She asks people where they defecate when they have diarrhea or when it is raining heavily. There is a murmur, and people point out various places on the map. She asks the kids to sprinkle more yellow powder at those places. Soon the map has shades of yellow all over it.
She requests some water to drink. Somebody gets her a glass. She asks the crowd whether it is the same water they drink. They all nod affirmatively. She asks a woman to drink it. She does. The CLTS Volunteer pulls out a hair and holds it in her hand. She asks the people whether they see it. From that distance, they can't. She then dips that hair in the glass of water and asks the woman to drink it. The woman refuses. After all, hair has been dipped in it. She points out that a fly has six serrated legs. She reminds them that they saw houseflies on poop during their tour. They also had houseflies in the marketplace and in their homes. If they had no problem drinking water and eating food that had flies on it, why worry about her hair?
The crowd gets silent. The silence is broken by a murmur. Soon the decibels go up. People start pointing out problems. People point fingers at each other for their behavior. The Volunteer then leads them to the solution. The village commits to it. Localities and communities were rendered open defecation-free with this small intervention. It was possible only by the involvement of the community.
Did the people not know the problem all along? They did. But either people got used to the status quo or accepted it as fait accompli. When an outsider makes them see the naked truth, they trip over it. They cannot refute the reality. It is first essential to get uncomfortable with the existing condition. Only then do people get motivated to act.
I conduct an offsite, 3-Day Scaling-up Session. Many of my clients give me various feedbacks like:
It is like a detox.
I had my head spinning.
I had a sleepless night.
I have steam coming out of my ears.
The workshop is designed on the concept of CLTS. With irrefutable facts, it makes the team trip over the truth. Being uncomfortable is the first step in the transformation journey.
Subodh
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