Status of sustainable sanitation chain in rural , semi-urban , and urban regions : a case study of Maharashtra , India

Since 2014, the Government of India has constructed millions of toilets with onsite containment technology (OCT) (i.e., pit latrines and septic tanks). In this study, a detailed analysis of the toilets built, people’s awareness about the existing sanitation system, and faecal sludge management (FSM) in rural, semi-urban, and urban areas of Maharashtra, India was done by carrying out a household (HH) survey and interviews with stakeholders. In the surveyed areas, open defaecation (OD) has been eliminated and an individual HH toilet with OCT is the most common sanitation available. The rural area has no FSM facilities. The semi-urban area has a very little faecal sludge (FS) collection by private agencies, while the urban area has a government-aided FS collection system. However, the semi-urban and urban areas have no disposal or treatment facility for the FS collected. In the urban area, irregular emptying of FS has triggered 7% of the HHs to practise OD and 29% of the HHs use manual labour for emptying the OCT. This study can help practitioners, government agencies, and non-governmental organisations to understand the ground reality for establishing/modifying FSM rules and regulations for Indian conditions.


INTRODUCTION
One of the major contributors to water pollution is the mixing of human waste with freshwater, especially where there is a lack of/non-functioning sewage treatment systems (Graham & Polizzotto ). Around 3.4 million people die started in 2014 in which more than 100 million toilets with onsite containment technologies (OCTs) were constructed in an effort towards achieving the sixth Sustainable Development Goal, of ensuring safe sanitation (Bhitush et al. ).
Previous studies, both before and during SBM, have noted that people do not use toilets due to unfinished infrastructures of the toilets, culturally ingrained behavioural barriers towards the use of latrines, and flawed monitoring (Hueso & Bell ; Routray et al. ). India. However, developing a model with a self-driven or even profitable approach for a sustainable sanitation system is crucial in developing countries such as India (Mehta et al. ). Additionally, studies (Routray et  To understand the Indian FSM system, analysis was divided into components based on the class of toilets and sanitation chain available; the existing OCTs; and the method used for emptying, transportation, treatment, and safe disposal. The obtained data were cleaned and analysed using confirmatory data analysis with respect to the objectives, and the FSM system was analysed using the excreta flow diagram or shit flow diagram (SFD) tool.

Surveyed rural area -Katavi
Of the 628 people residing in 126 HHs in Katavi village, only 4 HHs claimed to have an agrarian livelihood, whereas the other HHs were mainly dependent on the business. All HHs in this rural area have private water supply mainly through bore wells, indicating the presence of surplus water for domestic purposes. The development of the rural area was dynamic as 27% of the HHs migrated into the area within the past 5 years, due to its proximity to Pune. As illustrated in Figure 2, 98% of OD was eliminated in this rural area mainly due to the emphasis of Indian government schemes on building of toilets. In total, 23% of the HHs were connected to community toilets (CTs), i.e., toilets serving more than 3 HHs and shared toilets (ShTs), i.e., toilets serving 2 or 3 HHs, and remaining 75% of the HHs were  connected to individual HH toilets (IHHTs). The surveyed rural area had no sewerage system and was dependent on the OCT. As depicted in Figure 2,   In addition, surveyed semi-urban area is famous for its rice cultivation, especially the 'Indrayani' variety of rice. In this case, as FS is disposed directly into paddy field, the potential for faecal coliform transmission into food need to be studied.

The surveyed urban area -Faizpur
Faizpur municipal council has a population of 22,342 staying in 4,536 HHs and being an old city, the area has almost reached its capacity for growth, and its water source is the Suki river. Only 59% of the HHs were pucca (designed to be solid or permanent) buildings, whereas the remaining 41% resided in slums and urban encroachments.
The major livelihood of people in the area is daily wage work.
As depicted in Figure 5, 69% of HHs had IHHTs and other HHs depended mainly on CTs and ShTs. Approximately 7% of the HHs were practising OD, despite having CTs. Investigation revealed that these HHs were provided  Figure 6). The type of toilets has an influence on FS characteristics, that is, the FS from the community and public toilets is not biologically stable (as the technology is desludged frequently), while the FS from the IHHTs is biologically stable and has uniform characteristics.
Therefore, in this study, the understanding of the existing toilet class and its OCT is considered as the first step in FSM. In all the surveyed areas, the HH claims that the major class of toilets was the IHHT which was connected to septic tanks. However, these septic tanks were only containers, a few of which had baffles. Usually, the septic tanks were square shaped with or without compartments based on the availability of space and financial status of the user (they did not meet the Indian standard norms for septic tanks -IS 2740), leading to less efficient degradation of excreta. The use of non-standard technologies could be due to the fact that there is no enforcement of standards by governing bodies while approving building plans and that local toilet builders were untrained in the construction of standard septic tanks. In the surveyed urban area, toilet blockages and unhygienic conditions prevailed due to the improper maintenance of toilets and irregular emptying of FS, triggering OD. Thus, the lack of FSM can trigger OD, eventually wasting all the efforts of sanitation schemes.

Emptying and transportation
As shown in Figure 6, the surveyed rural area had no basic   In the present study, the cost for emptying per OCT was found to be 1, 200-2,200 (16-30$) in the rural area, 1, 000-15,000 (13-200$) in the semi-urban area, and 1,000-4,000 (13-54$) in the urban area. The cost of emptying service depends on the quantity of FS to be removed and the distance from the HH to the disposal point. The cost paid by the HH based on their income level is illustrated in Figure 8. In the semi-urban area, the BPL HHs claimed to pay less than 500 (7$), whereas APL HHs claim to pay higher than 500 (7$) for emptying the OCTs were paid only by the APL HHs for emptying the OCT (Figure 8(a)). Similarly, all the charges were claimed to be paid by the APL HHs in the urban area. This indicates that the BPL HHs may never empty their OCT or may also stop using toilets to avoid the financial

FS disposal or treatment
The surveyed rural, semi-urban, and urban areas had no treatment or disposal facility. The interviews with the desludging agency revealed the following disposal practices.  the safe collection, transportation, and disposal of human excreta from Indian urban areas. In this regard, the Centre for Science and Environment, India (a non-profit public interest research and advocacy organisation working on the water and sanitation sector) has started encouraging the use of the excreta flow diagram or SFD as a tool for understanding sanitation in India. The SFD is a tool to readily visualise, understand, and communicate how excreta physically flow through the point of defaecation to disposal or end-use. It includes a qualitative assessment of FSM along the service delivery pathway, namely, containment, emptying, transportation, treatment, and end-use (SFD ). In this study, a comprehensive SFD analysis (which includes stakeholder engagement and systematic primary data collection) was conducted by using the SFD Graphic Generator (SuSanA platform). Green arrows moving from the left to right in the graph represent excreta that are safely managed and moved along the sanitation service chain, whereas red arrows turning towards the bottom of the graph represent excreta that are not safely managed and discharged into the environment. The width of each arrow is proportional to the percentage of the population whose excreta contribute to that flow. In Figure 9(a) and 9(b), the SFDs of the surveyed rural and semi-urban areas indicate that FS was safely contained in only 7 and 4% cases, respectively, whereas it was not safely contained in 93 and 96% cases, respectively. Thus, this indicates the severity of water pollution in these study areas, where groundwater is the main source of water. One of the limitations of SFD analysis for rural or semi-urban India is the unavailability of data on size, shape, and effectiveness of OCT. Figure 9(c) illustrates that the SFD of the urban area indicates zero safe FS containment, signifying the worst FSM.
All the SFDs demonstrated that the majority of OCTs were not emptied, indicating FS flowing into the environment without treatment. The surveyed rural area has mostly toilets directly letting excreta into the environment. Furthermore, typical septic tank vacuum tankers are usually not powerful enough to empty pit latrines. Thus, the treatment of human waste at the source by using onsite sanitation technologies