Drinking Water

Total Sanitation Campaign (TSC)

Rural sanitation came into focus in the Government of India in the World Water Decade of 1980s. The Central Rural Sanitation Programme was started in 1986 to provide sanitation facilities in rural areas.
It was a supply driven, highly subsidy and infrastructure oriented programme. As a result of these deficiencies and low financial allocations, the CRSP had little impact on the gargantuan problem.
The experience of community-driven, awareness generating campaign based programmes in some states and the results of evaluation of CRSP, led to the formulation of the Total Sanitation Campaign (TSC) approach in 1999.

Objectives:

The main objectives of the TSC are as under:

1. Bring about an improvement in the general quality of life in the rural areas.
2. Accelerate sanitation coverage in rural areas.
3. Generate felt demand for sanitation facilities through awareness creation and health education.
4. Cover schools/ Anganwadi’s in rural areas with sanitation facilities and promote hygiene education and sanitary habits among students.
5. Encourage cost effective and appropriate technologies in sanitation.
6. Eliminate open defecation to minimize risk of contamination of drinking water sources and food.
7. Convert dry latrines to pour flush latrines, and eliminate manual scavenging practice, wherever in existence in rural areas.