Overview of Urban Sanitation Policy in India

India’s cities are growing at a breathtaking pace, but this rapid urbanisation has exposed a stark reality: millions of urban residents still lack access to safe, dignified sanitation. Open drains, overflowing septic tanks, and crowded slum settlements without toilets are not just an inconvenience; they are a public health crisis. To address this, the Government of India introduced the National Urban Sanitation Policy (NUSP) in 2008, the first comprehensive framework dedicated to transforming sanitation in towns and cities. This policy laid the foundation for later flagship programmes like the Swachh Bharat Mission and continues to shape how Indian cities plan, fund, and deliver sanitation services today.

The vision behind the policy
Why women and the urban poor were prioritised
Key features of the National Urban Sanitation Policy
Integrated low-cost sanitation scheme
City sanitation task forces and plans
Baseline surveys and rating of cities
Swachh Bharat Abhiyan: turning policy into a mass movement
Eliminating open defecation
Eradicating manual scavenging
Scientific solid waste management
Creating an enabling environment for private participation
Linking sanitation, health, and the environment
Challenges that remain

The vision behind the policy

The NUSP was launched in October 2008 by the Ministry of Urban Development to tackle a worsening urban sanitation gap. At the time of its release, more than 14 million urban households had no sanitation facility, and roughly 37% of faecal matter generated in cities went untreated. The policy responded with an ambitious goal: making every Indian city totally sanitised, healthy, and liveable.

Its official vision statement reads that all Indian cities and towns should become totally sanitised, healthy and liveable, ensuring good public health and environmental outcomes for all citizens, with a special focus on hygienic and affordable sanitation facilities for the urban poor and women. This focus on the poor and on women was significant because earlier sanitation efforts often ignored the very groups most exposed to disease, harassment, and indignity due to a lack of toilets.

Why women and the urban poor were prioritised

Women in slums frequently wait until dark to relieve themselves, exposing them to harassment and assault. Children in unsanitary settlements face higher rates of diarrhoea and stunting. By centring its vision on these vulnerable groups, the NUSP made it clear that sanitation is not just about infrastructure; it is about dignity, safety, and equity.

Key features of the National Urban Sanitation Policy

The NUSP introduced several practical instruments that gave states and cities a concrete roadmap. These features moved sanitation from a side project to a planned, monitored urban service.

Integrated low-cost sanitation scheme

One of the central pillars supporting the NUSP’s goals is the Integrated Low Cost Sanitation (ILCS) Scheme. The scheme converts or constructs low-cost sanitation units using sanitary two-pit pour-flush latrines designed to suit local conditions, and builds new latrines for Economically Weaker Section (EWS) households that have none.

What makes the ILCS particularly important is its dual purpose. It began with the objective of eradicating all dry latrines and liberating manual scavengers from the inhuman practice of carrying night soil. The financial structure is also designed to keep costs manageable, with the scheme funded through a mix of 63% HUDCO loan, 32% Government of India subsidy, and 5% beneficiary contribution. This blended model lets even cash-strapped urban local bodies provide proper toilets to the poorest households.

City sanitation task forces and plans

The NUSP recognised that sanitation cannot be solved from Delhi alone. Each city has its own geography, population mix, slum density, and water table. The policy therefore instructed states to prepare detailed state-level urban sanitation strategies and City Sanitation Plans, and proposed setting up multi-stakeholder City Sanitation Task Forces to drive implementation.

These task forces bring together municipal officials, public health experts, NGOs, community representatives, and private operators. The City Sanitation Plan then serves as a city-specific blueprint covering toilets, sewerage, septage management, drainage, and solid waste, all aligned to local conditions.

Baseline surveys and rating of cities

To monitor progress, the policy introduced the idea of baseline surveys and a city rating system. Cities are assessed on indicators like access to toilets, treatment of wastewater, hygiene practices, and outcomes such as reduction in open defecation. The framework emphasises integrated city-wide sanitation plans, institutional strengthening, awareness generation, behavioural change, pro-poor approaches, and cost-effective technologies that lead to open-defecation-free cities and the safe disposal of human and liquid wastes.

This rating system created healthy competition between cities and gave municipal leaders measurable targets. It also made information public, putting pressure on under-performing cities to act.

Swachh Bharat Abhiyan: turning policy into a mass movement

While the NUSP set the vision, the Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM), launched on 2 October 2014, turned that vision into a national movement. It built on the NUSP’s foundations but scaled up implementation dramatically, especially in urban areas through Swachh Bharat Mission (Urban) or SBM-U, run by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs.

Eliminating open defecation

Eliminating open defecation was the most visible objective. The mission aimed to achieve an open-defecation-free India by 2 October 2019, the 150th anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi’s birth, and according to government data, approximately 90 million toilets were constructed during this period. In urban areas, the strategy combined individual household toilets, community toilets in slums, and public toilets in commercial areas to ensure no one had to defecate in the open.

Eradicating manual scavenging

Manual scavenging, the practice of cleaning human excreta by hand, is illegal in India yet persists in many cities. SBM-U made its eradication a core thrust by converting insanitary toilets into sanitary pour-flush models. The mission’s key thrust areas include elimination of open defecation, eradication of manual scavenging by converting insanitary toilets to sanitary ones, modern and scientific municipal solid waste management, behavioural change, and capacity augmentation of Urban Local Bodies to create an enabling environment for private sector participation.

SBM-U 2.0, launched in 2021, goes further by focusing on holistic sanitation with end-to-end management of toilet effluents, treatment and reuse of used water, and eradication of hazardous entry into sewers and septic tanks through mechanisation of sewer and septic tank cleaning operations. This mechanisation push is critical because it directly attacks the conditions that force workers into dangerous manual cleaning.

Scientific solid waste management

Sanitation is not only about toilets. Heaps of uncollected garbage are a major source of disease and environmental pollution in Indian cities. SBM-U pushed cities to segregate waste at source into wet, dry, and hazardous categories and to set up processing facilities. Cities like Indore and Surat became national models, with thousands of urban local bodies achieving ODF++ status, meaning complete faecal sludge management.

Creating an enabling environment for private participation

The policy and the mission both recognised that government alone cannot build, operate, and maintain every toilet and waste plant. SBM-U therefore actively encourages public-private partnerships for community toilet maintenance, faecal sludge treatment plants, and waste-to-energy projects. This creates jobs, ensures professional operation, and reduces the long-term burden on municipal budgets.

Linking sanitation, health, and the environment

The NUSP’s biggest contribution may be how it reframed sanitation. Earlier, it was treated as a plumbing problem. The policy positioned it as a public health, gender, and environmental issue all at once. Untreated sewage pollutes rivers like the Ganga and Yamuna. Open defecation contaminates groundwater. Poor solid waste management drives air pollution through unregulated burning. Each toilet built and each waste stream treated has knock-on benefits for health and ecology.

This integrated view is now visible in how Indian cities plan. Sanitation budgets are no longer separate from health budgets or environmental clearances. River-cleaning missions like Namami Gange are tightly linked to urban sewage treatment targets, all of which trace back to the policy logic the NUSP introduced in 2008.

Challenges that remain

Despite real progress, gaps persist. Many cities declared open-defecation-free still have residents using public spaces because of broken toilets or unreliable water supply. Investigations have shown that in some districts declared 100% ODF, open defecation and manual scavenging remained widely prevalent, and lives of manual scavengers have changed less than expected. Treatment of used water remains inadequate in most cities, and behavioural change, while improving, is uneven.

The next phase of urban sanitation will have to focus on operation and maintenance, faecal sludge management for cities without sewers, dignified mechanised cleaning of sewers, and stronger inclusion of sanitation workers in city planning.

What do you think? Should sanitation rankings of cities also include the working conditions and wages of sanitation workers, not just toilet coverage? And in your own town or city, which part of the sanitation chain – toilets, sewage treatment, or solid waste – needs the most urgent attention?

References

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Overview of Urban Sanitation Policy in India

Table of Contents

The vision behind the policy 🔗

Why women and the urban poor were prioritised 🔗

Key features of the National Urban Sanitation Policy 🔗

Integrated low-cost sanitation scheme 🔗

City sanitation task forces and plans 🔗

Baseline surveys and rating of cities 🔗

Swachh Bharat Abhiyan: turning policy into a mass movement 🔗

Eliminating open defecation 🔗

Eradicating manual scavenging 🔗

Scientific solid waste management 🔗

Creating an enabling environment for private participation 🔗

Linking sanitation, health, and the environment 🔗

Challenges that remain 🔗