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).

The World Health Organisation have developed new guidelines on sanitation and health because current sanitation programmes are not achieving anticipated health gains and there is a lack of authoritative health-based guidance on sanitation. The new guidelines summarise the evidence on the effectiveness of a range of sanitation interventions and provide a comprehensive framework for health-protecting sanitation, covering policy and governance measures, implementation of sanitation technologies, systems and behavioural interventions, risk-based management, and monitoring approaches.

This report is the culmination of a study conducted by the Centre for Policy Research's 'Accountability Initiative' on Swachh Bharat Mission-Gramin in 2017 on the request of the Udaipur district administration. This study aims to understand the detailed process evaluation of the implementation of the recent sanitation efforts in Udaipur, and the outcomes, which led to Open Defecation Free status in selected Gram Panchayats.

Specifically the study aims to:

Ensuring everyone has access to appropriate WASH facilities is one of the most fundamental challenges in international development. Researchers and funders need to consider carefully where there is the need for new primary evidence, such as impact evaluations, and for new evidence syntheses, such as systematic reviews. 3ie evidence gap maps are collections of evidence from impact evaluations and systematic reviews. They highlight where there are sufficient impact evaluations to support systematic reviews and where more studies are needed.