Over the past decade or so, donors have increasingly sought to link their financing to results on the ground, and focus on interventions towards the poor. In sanitation, this effort has mostly taken the form of pilot operations through government agencies; only a handful of schemes have involved international non-governmental organisations (INGOs). This discussion paper shows how the INGO East Meets West (EMW) pioneered the use of output-based aid (OBA) type incentives to ensure sustainability and better poverty targeting in Vietnam.

In December 2013, the Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation Act (“the Act”) was notified by the Central Indian Government. The Act is a Parliamentary law, binding on all states. While an earlier 1993 law prohibited the employment of manual scavengers and construction of dry latrines, the strength of the new Act is that it brings hazardous cleaning of sewers and septic tanks under its ambit.

The clock is counting down to 2nd October 2019, the Government of India’s date to eradicate open defecation. It is quickly becoming clear the Government is looking at how to consolidate gains made in the past few years on sanitation and not being undone by slippages. As the mission has progressed, the sanitation coverage of rural India has increased to 94.73% and 19 states and UTS, 432 districts and 422,650 villages have been declared as open defecation-free (ODF). Still, there is need to construct as many 148 million toilets in one year (SBM MIS, 2018).