Data and monitoring in the Indian rural water and sanitation sector – a review of current status and proposed ways forward

This paper reviews progress on monitoring and evaluation on water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) programmes in rural India, focusing on the Government programs and the related data and monitoring initiatives. The current state of the WASH sector is presented and discussed in terms of progress across geographical, wealth and social groupings, Though progress has been made, key challenges include data quality, reliability, standardization, availability, reach to all social groups and scaling up with quality services. Possible ways forward are proposed at various administrative levels (National, State, District and down to the individual) and discussed along with good sector practices. Efforts that advocate for increased public data becoming available on-line and then using this to improve the visualization of data are described. Recommendations are identified around increasing evidence-based policy and implementation and help support corrective management action via the linking of monitoring to intervention to results and stronger integration across the social, financial and technical issues.