Functioning of community sanitary complexes in rural India: insights into selected states

An important component of the Swachh Bharat Mission is the construction of community sanitary complexes (CSCs) to address the unmet need for sanitation for households. The success, however, critically hinges on the operational management of CSCs. We examine the functioning status of CSCs in rural areas of five Indian states. Furthermore, we study the association between alternative management arrangements with the functioning and maintenance status of the CSCs. A principal component analysis-based CSC functioning index is created based on the maintenance indicators and sanitary items to identify better-performing CSCs. The hierarchical structure of data collection is utilized to apply mixed-effects logistic regression analysis to examine the association between management arrangement for maintenance and CSC functioning index. Four in every five CSCs were directly managed by the Gram Panchayat. Over 90% of the CSCs have running water supply but electricity connection and lighting arrangement were available in 66.1 and 55.1% CSCs, respectively. The econometric analysis finds that CSCs managed by worship area groups or those managed by village CSC user-groups have better CSC maintenance status. The cleaning frequency of the CSC has a significant association with CSC functioning status. The operational management of CSCs is an area for further policy attention for sustained community sanitation efforts.