From the 6th to the 10th August, development practitioners and government representatives from 17 countries gathered in Lilongwe, Malawi to discuss opportunities, experiences and challenges in Monitoring and Evaluating (M&E) for Community Led Total Sanitation (CLTS). The question driving the workshop was: As national governments around the world begin to take CLTS to scale, how do we simultaneously scale up Monitoring and Evaluation methodologies and tools to meet information gaps and capture the right evidence to track progress and inform improved programming?

India’s population accounts for approximately 1/7th of the world’s population. The Government of India has the immense challenge of governing and providing services for over 1.2 billion people. As we were touching down in Mumbai on the 14th March 2012, and the infamous smell of the city hit our noses, I was reminded of the enormity of the task of governance and service provision for 1/7th of the world.