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Introduction - Vision -
Strategy
- Process
Gujarat 2010:
The Gujarat Vision Process
The effort to articulate a ‘Vision 21' relating to the aspirations and
needs of the people of Gujarat has brought together some 30 individuals
and institutions in support of the Collaborative Council's initiative
(Annex 1). These participants have been the catalysts for a series of
consultations over the past months toward drafting a Vision 21 for the
future of drinking water, hygiene behaviors and sanitation in Gujarat.
Consultations have taken place with households, communities,
community-based organisations, authorities and donors in order to learn
from past experience and set realistic goals as well as to deter-mine how
best to reach them.
A dialogue with communities and authorities on sector issues has been
on going in Gujarat for many years. The WSSCC initiative has given a
useful opportunity to pull together the lessons of the past,
revisit many familiar assumptions and practices and draw on the experience
of partners elsewhere in India and the world.
Gujarat NGOs have been among the pioneering forces in water and
sanitation plan-ning and action in India, as well as in hygiene education.
In a state with chronic drought and water scarcity, adequate drinking
water services have been a key social and politi-cal issue. (This has been
further underlined while the Vision 21 process was on going. 1999 was a
year of acute water shortage in Gujarat, in the midst of national
elections). Sanitation education here has its roots in Mahatma Gandhi's
priority to this need ever since his earliest activities in India, which
began in Ahmedabad. More recently, activists in Gujarat have been closely
involved with India's National Drinking Water Mission.
Work on a Vision 21 for Gujarat was inspired in September 1997 by the
visit to Ahmedabad of Mr Hans van Damme. At a meeting
organised with Ahmedabad-based NGOs working in the water and sanitation
sector, Mr van Damme presented the idea of the global Vision 21 process,
and the linkages that were being sought between needs and
aspirations at local, national, regional and international levels.
There was a belief that Gujarat offered an ideal location to test and
apply the Vision process to local needs. Gujarat had a strong record of
public and private experience and action in the sector, a history of
participatory and community effort, a network of mature community-based
organisations, an active state authority including a major training
infrastructure, specialised institutions (with some devoted to sanitation)
and considerable experience in hygiene education, women's issues,
communication and cooperative structures. Gujarat had been a major arena
of work associated with the National Drinking Water Mission.
Participants in the September 1998 meeting decided to attempt drafting
of a Vision 21 for Gujarat. This could be a useful tool for forward
planning and action, help consolidate networking among local
stakeholders and make an important contribution to national and regional
thinking toward a global Vision 21 by drawing on Gujarat's inherent
strength of experience.
Discussions within the group underlined the need for an integrated
approach to such an exercise. Its experience strongly endorsed the
WSSCC's emphasis on sanitation and more appropriate technologies as key
issues. It stressed the importance of seeing the “watsan” situation within
a broader framework of natural resource management, and the empower-ment
of communities toward self-reliance. Gujarat's experience with mobilising
women toward social action had been significant.
Once the group resolved to articulate a Vision 21 for Gujarat, a first
step was to formulate a set of key questions ( Annex 2 ) which
participants could use to stimulate discussion at several levels. The
foundation would be responses from communities and households, through
organising meetings and visits and by drawing on consultations held in
recent months as well as on accumulated experience.
An analysis of the response to key questions ( Annex 3 ) revealed a
very large number of issues, and possible goals and strategies concerning
them. Such an enormous range of
concerns demanded prioritisation, and also suggested a need for the
Vision group itself to re-examine and re-think the validity of some of its
own assumptions regarding community/household needs and aspirations. A
meeting was then planned to share the outcome of the survey, and to try
and select priorities for the Vision exercise and its follow-up.
A meeting on 3 April 1999 provided a major breakthrough toward
articulating a relevant Vision. There were clear messages from past
experience, and signals for the need for thorough stocktaking and
self-evaluation, before charting directions for the future. The discussion
confirmed a strong dichotomy between urban and rural issues, and
for the overriding importance of efficient management of natural
resources. In a state with a natural scarcity of water, this must
include approaches for recharging ground water, minimising waste and
examining/strengthening the legal framework within which planning and
action is conducted.
A critical issue that emerged was the need for change in established
roles and relation-ships among stakeholders. Issues of privatisation,
decentralisation and the future role of state authorities needed to be
thought out with great care, avoiding simplistic assumptions.
Technology choices that were cost-effective, appropriate to a
variety of needs and user-friendly would also have to be easy to maintain.
Community responsibility toward operation and maintenance was seen as an
emerging issue of great importance, closely linked to changing roles in
the community-government partnership.
Sanitation required an urgent change of emphasis from
coverage to greater attention to actual usage. This in
turn was dependent on improving levels of knowledge, attitude and practice
through strong hygiene education and communication. Reaching women and
dealing with the gender implications of “watsan” demanded close attention
to the role of women in self-government, i.e. their effective
participation in Panchayati Raj institutions of self-governance. The group
felt that these institutions would need to be mobilised to accept a very
active future role in water resource and sanitation management and for the
spread of hygiene awareness and action. There was recognition that women
have been the worst affected by the lack of sanitation facilities in rural
and urban situations, and mobilising women must be a first priority. There
was debate on the on-going Government scheme of operating sanitation
programmes through the present incentive scheme (operated through an NGO
in each state, which acts as a nodal institution for processing
proposals). This multi-tier evaluation scheme, with its complex
documentation, evaluation and collection procedures, seemed to need
re-examination. There was a view that subsidy-based incentives have
accelerated dependency rather than encouraging a more self-reliant
attitude within communi-ties. Decentralisation was seen as
essential to improved sanitation, with clear systems for encouraging
entrepreneurship while protecting the interests of the weakest sections.
The potential here for employment generation and economic empowerment,
particularly of women, emerged through references to the success of
Village Sanitation Funds managed by local groups in Orissa.
Specific attention was demanded toward the condition of the
scavenger community, still marginalised in Gujarat through the
inhuman practice of manual handling of human excreta.
Although banned by legislation, this shameful practice continues. It
demanded a time-bound joint initiative toward its control and elimination.
Rehabilitating these communities should be a major responsibility of all
stakeholders in the sector, working together.
The pace of progress in the sector also seemed to demand greater
understanding of the need for change within the NGO sector itself,
and not just in Government. Transparency and accountability in operation,
better capacity for networking, trust and sharing among non-government
partners, integrating and synchronising activities for maximum benefit of
communities were aspects which required improving NGO capacities for
change and for accepting new responsibilities. A stronger NGO sector, with
robust net-works and greater unity in action, could demand a stronger role
in planning and implementation. It could also more successfully act as a
pressure for changes urgently needed at policy levels within the state,
and in national and international decision-making.
Defining new roles and responsibilities for NGOs also
required clear articulation of what Government should be expected
to do in the coming years. There was no clear consensus
on this issue. One school of opinion was that Government should
restrict itself to facilitat-ing community-based/community-initiated
action. Others felt that this was impractical, and that the state had an
overriding responsibility in ensuring water and sanitation services as
well as hygiene education. The contrast of urban and rural situations was
raised, to point out that NGOs and communities could not possibly expect
to handle the complex and capital-intensive demands of urban water supply
and sanitation. Agreement existed on the need for far greater
participation by communities and their NGO representatives in plan-ning
and implementation, as well as for authorities to be more clearly
accountable to the communities they are expected to serve.
It was felt that there was now a need to spell out what responsibility
communities in Gujarat could at this stage assume, and what this might
require in terms of government facilitation as well as internal
capacitation. The challenges of influencing and participating in urban
planning and action also needed to be more specifically identified. It was
agreed that maintenance and monitoring functions would require active
community and NGO involve-ment. They offered an opportunity for better
partnership with state authorities.
At the meeting, Lokvikas (through its representative Shri Biplab Paul)
volunteered to coordinate the next steps toward a draft Vision 21 for
Gujarat. It was decided to select priorities for group action,
draft a short thought-provoking document as a Vision statement, work
out strategies and action alternatives, meet with authorities to exchange
ideas for the future, raise resources for these initial tasks, and feed
the outcome into the wider Vision 21 process.
A comprehensive document was then put together to merge
responses received to the key questions in the earlier round to the ideas
and suggestions of the 3 April meeting. With this, a further round of
consultations was held with groups who had been unable to attend the April
meeting, as well as with the participants’ own constituencies. Discussions
were also held with key resource persons on technical issues.
This attempt to put together the most important issues and concerns
took place through a series of consultations during May and June 1999.
Ideas and suggestions were made on possible strategies toward
decentralisation and capacity building, greater
transparency and accountability between partners, and the
development of an enforce-able legal framework. Special needs were
discussed of urban development (where the greatest impact of
population pressures was expected in the coming years) and of
capital-intensive technologies that Gujarat's cities may require.
Marketing of services and inherent issues of privatisation and payment
for services, were examined. Monitoring and surveil-lance of water
quality emerged as a key area for NGO/Government cooperation. The role
of Panchayati Raj institutions in future strategies was underlined.
Reviving and promoting water-harvesting technologies in both cities
and villages was suggested as priority for strategy and action.
Respondents felt that the Gujarat activity must draw on regional and
global experience in the areas of hygiene education and practice as
well as the implications of promoting water and sanitation as human
rights. These concepts (which were being debated in the global Vision
process) were relatively new to the sector, and were basic in their
implica-tions. The household model suggested by the global Vision 21
effort also required examination in the context of Gujarat, where
household involvement is familiar.
The outcome of these consultations was taken for joint review when the
group met again on 26 June. This discussion focussed on the need for a
strong investment in understand-ing the geohydrological diversity
of the state before recommendations are finalised. How
decentralisation concepts could be translated into actual practice may
also need greater concentration on defining stakeholder roles
toward a better “watsan” future, and this would make strong demands on
NGOs toward professionalism and efficiency. Media support for
policy change and understanding of the sector's needs would be required,
and this demanded planning and sharpening communication skills. Particular
attention was suggested toward identifying economic opportunities
within the sector that could speed community response, particularly
among women and youth.
There was satisfaction at the quality of dialogue that had taken place
through the group and between communities, activists and planners. It had
progressed from individual aspirations and needs to the identification of
key issues/goals/strategies as well as their prioritisation. It may be
important for the group, which had come together and worked together
informally over the past months, to now decide if any steps were needed
to establish its own legitimacy. This could be important for
taking the next steps in articu-lating a Vision 21 for Gujarat (with
strategies and actions in its support) and initiating a dialogue with
state and national institutions. It was agreed that a Vision statement,
sup-ported by strategies and suggestions for action, would be drafted by a
small committee of volunteers (Nafisa Barot, Rajesh Bhat and Biplab Paul
were nominated by the participants) and brought back to the larger group
for discussion. After ratification, these ideas could be shared with
national/regional/global consultations.
The drafting process completed its first phase with the Gujarat 2010
document. It was ratified at the group’s meeting on 25 October 1999 and
shared with participants in the Collaborative Council’s Global Forum
(Ahmedabad, 14 November 1999). Discusions with the international
community suggested areas for review and strengthening. Improvements to
Gujarat 2010 were discussed on 22 February 2000, and the final document
prepared for discussion at a special session on the Gujarat Vision at the
2nd World Water Forum in The Hague on 18 March 2000.
A film was specially prepared by the National Institute of Design, with
the assistance of the Collaborative Council, to communicate the central
message of Gujarat 2010: serving the unserved, through joint action and
renewed urgency.The Gujarat 2010 document and the film would now be
translated into Gujarat and used for communicating this message throughout
the state.
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