The common practice for desludging of septic tanks is ‘demand-based desludging’ rather than a regular service. Such practices have adverse social and environmental impacts. Scheduled desludging is advocated to maintain the performance of septic tanks and avoid adverse effects on the environment. Wai, a small town in the state of Maharashtra, India, is the first city in India to implement scheduled desludging. This paper discusses impact of scheduled desludging on water quality. The quality of water before scheduled desludging and after scheduled desludging is assessed. It describes monitoring the quality of groundwater, river water, effluent from drains and supernatants from septic tanks. It reflects the linkages of scheduled desludging and improved supernatants and drain water quality which as a result improves the river and groundwater quality. The results suggest positive impact of regular desludging on the performance of septic tanks. This has led to improvement in the quality of drain water, ground water and river water.

Gujarat has made important strides to ensure that most parts of the state become water secure. In 2005, Gujarat was one of the few states that recognized that its urban areas were its ‘engines of growth’ and made significant investments in urban infrastructure. A state- wide water supply grid was constructed to transfer inter-basin water from perennial surface water sources to water-scarce areas. While these schemes have improved household-level access to municipal water supply, service levels have not improved. In this paper, we argue that along with infrastructure creation, there is a need to focus on monitoring, operation and maintenance of existing system and improving efficiency. We analyze information available from the performance assessment system (PAS) setup by the CEPT University for monitoring of urban services in India. It has annual information of water service delivery in all the urban areas of Gujarat from 2010. We assess urban drinking water supply on three key aspects: equity, service quality and financial sustainability. We also identify a few key intervention areas related to increased accountability, efficiency and equity in delivery of water supply services.

The focus of Swachh Bharat Mission (Clean India Mission) was to build toilets to make India open defecation free. While India has succeeded in achieving this goal, to move toward “safely managed sanitation” as per target 6.2 of the Sustainable Development Goals, it is necessary to ensure that all fecal waste is safely collected and treated. The common practice for desludging of septic tanks is “demand-based desludging” rather than a regular service. Such practices have adverse social and environmental impacts. To overcome these shortcomings, scheduled desludging is advocated. This paper first reviews the need for regular desludging of septic tanks. It then outlines the emerging experience of design and implementation of scheduled desludging for inclusive, equitable, and sustainable sanitation to achieve social and environmental benefits in two Indian cities. In these cities, a performance-linked annuity payment framework is used to engage a private desludging enterprise. Payment is met through a sanitation tax and transfer from the general property taxes. It outlines the benefits of scheduled desludging in Indian cities and argues that it is critical to achieve improved sanitation.

Despite significant public investment in urban sanitation, over 37 million people in Indian cities resort to open defecation. This column examines the existing information on open defecation in urban India, and finds that the most important determinant is access to on-premise toilets. Local government leadership, targeted and smart subsidies, stakeholder collaboration and innovative financing options can help increase such access and accelerate elimination of the problem.