Mathur Ritika Passi

in the open despite having access to toilets,
such as perceived convenience and comfort
of openly defecating, and path dependency
on the age-old practice. 28 These factors
override the rationale of health and safety
benefits that accrue from using toilets.
While the dynamic political leadership has
managed to build much-needed awareness
and momentum towards the sanitation
goal through the Swachh Bharat Mission,
continuous outreach communication, mass
social mobilisation and targeted efforts
at awareness creation will be required to
sustain change in the existing situation.
Capitalising on SDG 6
The water and sanitation SDG seems
promising and complements Indian
national efforts of revising strategies and
creating awareness to achieve total water
and sanitation. In contrast to the MDGs,
where water and sanitation were put as
a quantitative target within the broader
framework of environment sustainability,
the SDGs include a separate goal to “ensure
availability and sustainable management
of water and sanitation for all.” 29 The
goal further expands on the scope and
potential of MDGs by encompassing targets
on water resources management, water
quality, capacity building and inclusive
participation. In all, SDG 6 includes eight
targets.
Targets 6.1 and 6.2 aim to achieve
universal access to safe drinking water and
eradication of open defecation by 2030.
These two targets complement and extend
beyond the timeline of the Indian strategy
on water and sanitation (2011-2022).
While target 6.3 deals with improving
water quality, waste water management,
recycling and reusing, target 6.4 seeks
to “substantially increase water-use
efficiency” across all sectors and reduce
water scarcity. These targets address the
Indian challenge of water availability for
drinking purposes. As mentioned above,
the strategic document on water mentions
depleting groundwater resources and
chemical contamination of water bodies,
which directly affect quantity and quality
of water available for drinking and other
basic purposes. Consequently, source
sustainability, including both quality and
quantity of water, is treated as an urgent
and critical need. Water-use efficiency has
received attention in the Indian National
Water Policy, 2012, especially in the context
of industrial water. The government also
plans to create a Bureau of Water Use
Efficiency to regulate, monitor and improve
water use across industrial, agriculture,
potable water, power generation and urban
domestic environs. The target envisaged is
improving water-use efficiency by 20%. 30
While expanding on the erstwhile MDG
target, SDG targets 6.3 and 6.4 lack specific
metrics or quantitative targets. Calling for
substantial increase in water-use efficiency
can be considered vague and will likely
create difficulty in assessing this target.
Likewise, the other two targets on
integrated water resources management
(6.5) and water-related ecosystem
conservation goal (6.6) have a prescribed
timeline (till 2030), but again lack
specificity in proposing a quantitative
measure against which progress can be
measured. This is understandable given
the nature of the target. Integrated water
resources management (IWRM) and
ecosystem conservation are contextspecific
topics, and demand intense
institutional, political, economic and
judicial interventions. In India, IWRM
is a problematic approach, influenced
by political overtures. States have the
autonomy to decide on the use and
management of the river flowing within
their administrative boundaries. There
exists a series of historic interstate water
disputes that still remain unresolved and
cannot be disregarded. IWRM requires
disentangling land rights from water rights,
defining entitlements, equitable allocation
and inclusive participation. In effect, it
calls for radical social and political change
in the way water is economically and
socially valued. On the other hand, target
6.6, which proposes an ecosystem basin
approach, is a step beyond IWRM but is
more economically, politically and socially
feasible. However, currently these two
targets do not necessarily align with Indian
national priorities and their implementation
may depend mostly on the discrete work
carried out by large and small civil society
groups and international non-government
organisations.
Of the two last targets, the first (6.a) calls
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