NJ022 Project Work Written Report
Communicative Process between the females and males in Rural Indian society regarding Open Defecation issues
Table of Contents
Section 1 Timeline of Events
Section 2 Early context of Open Defecation in rural India
Mindsets of open defecators
Impacts
Government Agenda
Government Response
Evaluation of TSC
Section 3 Why marriageable men and women as a social context?
Section 4 Advertising Campaign by Government targeting marriageable men to build latrines for their potential wives (CS)
Advertising campaign plays a key role in the communicative process
Impacts and effectiveness of Advertising Campaign
Why did it work?
Why did it not work?
Section 5 Context in rural India today
Present context
Current measures
Evaluation of current measures
What is needed?
Section 6 Advertising Campaign led by women to target men to use the latrines built (Project)
Aims of communicative process
Proposed plan
Evaluation
Section 1: Timeline of Events
Section 2: Early context of Open Defecation in rural India (before 1999)
A. Mindsets of open defecators (Rural Indian Population)
Reasons for OD
Way of life
The rural Indian population have been practising OD since young and continue to do so as they do not see immediate repercussions.
Lack of toilets
Only 22% of rural India had toilets.
Associated with purity in Indian culture
It is thought that one should not eat and defecate under the same roof and should defecate as far as possible from the household.
OD not recognised as a health threat
A significant majority of rural Indians surveyed believed that latrines are not better for child health than OD, and more than half of those who practice OD believe that OD is better than latrine use.
Associated with a healthy, virtuous life
They believe that OD is good for their health through rising early, daily exercise in going to the fields and opportunity to enjoy fresh air.
B. Impacts of OD
Figure 1
C. Government’s agenda
The aim of the Indian Government is to eliminate OD in rural India, in order to increase societal welfare and increase the quality of living for Indians. This would be done through a variety of measures including subsidies, education and construction.
Figure 2: First communicative process
D. Government Response
The Total Sanitation Campaign (TSC) (1) was implemented by the government targeting rural Indian population to solve the sanitation problem in rural India.
The measures used were Information, Education and Communication (IEC) as well as physical measures although more emphasis was placed on the former.
Figure 3: Communicative process of TSC
E. Evaluation of Government’s response
TSC was unsuccessful as there were inefficiencies in the communicative process. This was due to its extensiveness (Figure 3), resulting in poor allocation of resources.
Labour
Despite teachers playing a key role in the transmission of knowledge at the village level, there were high teacher absence rates. This meant that some students did not have the opportunity to be taught about OD. Moreover, the low teacher to student ratio further exacerbates the problem as it is difficult to ensure all students are then educated properly about OD.
Unspecified educational campaign
Educational campaigns did not deal with socio-cultural connotations of OD (2A) due to their generalised methods of educating the people such as creation of a School Kit, which were not impactful. In addition, funds allocated for IEC were not managed properly. Hence, education was unsuccessful in changing the mindsets of the rural indian population.
Lack of toilets
Insufficient toilets were built by TSC. 70% of rural households do not have a toilet to meet the demand for sanitation facilities. Without building enough toilets for the villagers, even with education, rural Indians have no other alternatives but to continue OD. (2A)
In conclusion, the main issue with TSC was its broad target group for its campaign. Although a large target group would allow for greater outreach because of present cultural beliefs (2A) and misconceptions about the impact, it has resulted in poor implementation of the TSC. Insufficient resource allocation has hampered the process of educating the rural Indians and building of toilets. Hence, in order to avoid these issues, a specific target audience must be chosen.
Section 3: Why marriageable men and women as a social context?
Elimination of OD, household/community toilets to be available to the rural Indian population. The individual impact on women (2B) is the most immediate and should be selected to be resolved first. However in order to do this, men should be targeted instead. This is due to the patriarchal and patrilineal system in Indian society, where males feel a sense of responsibility of providing both physical and moral protection towards their ‘weaker’ family members. This creates an environment where change is difficult unless the male head of the household is convinced. Therefore, males should be targeted instead as they can make the decisions on the construction of toilets to lessen OD.
One possible way of convincing males is through marriage. Indian culture is greatly influenced by Hinduism, which inculcates the idea of Dharma, where marriage is considered to be sacred and a basic duty. By making sanitation facilities a condition for marriage, the lack of it in the households will cause men to feel threatened as it diminishes their marriage prospects. As a result, they will actively take steps to prevent such a situation. By leveraging on the dynamics between marriageable men and women, the government can partially achieve its aim (2C). Figure 4 illustrates a possible line of communication.
Figure 4: Possible line of communication the government can adopt
Section 4: Advertising Campaign by Government targeting men to build latrines for their future wives (CS)
The “No toilet, no bride” advertising campaign (1) launched by the central government, aimed at conveying the message that marriageable men should build toilets for their prospective brides.
Figure 5
Figure 6
A. Advertising plays a key role in the communicative process
Of the features in the campaign, the most prominent one is the targeted phrasing of slogans which taps into the social context of marriage markets. With this advertising campaign, marriageable women are able to voice out their concerns and demand for toilets when entering marriage negotiations and men are conditioned to think that it is normal to build toilets for the sake of women in the household. This taps into the high-demand marriage market in India and the social context (3). Without it, women would not be able to voice out their demands for toilets due to the low degree of autonomy (3) as men have the final say on the construction of the toilet, and will likely rule against it since they have no direct incentive and the perceived benefits of OD outweigh the costs (2A).
The local context, skewed gender ratio between men and women in certain parts of rural India has also increased its effectiveness. It has resulted in a disproportionate demand for brides by men, thus increasing the competition between men to gain the favour of potential wives and their families. The men would hence be more willing to comply with the advertising campaign and build toilets in order to have better marriage prospects. With this, women would benefit from having greater bargaining power on the construction toilets in their new households.
B. Impacts and effectiveness of Communicative Process
This communicative process is effective to some extent as it increased the rate of toilets built in rural India which contributed to the ongoing progress of TSC. From Figure 6, the ‘No toilet, No bride’ campaign increased the percentage of toilet ownership by 38.3% as compared to the 8.0% increase during the initial portion of the TSC.
In Haryana, 1.42 million toilets were built from 2005 to 2009 by people of different economic status after the ‘No Toilet, No Bride’ campaign was implemented. This shows that people of different socio-economic status have taken up toilet construction, showing the effectiveness of the advertising as it could find a common ground, marriage, to appeal to different groups.
Figure 6: Change in the percentage of houses with access to toilets post-sanitation campaign in Haryana
Hence, it proves the influence marriageable women and their families have on men as they have also responded by increasing their premarital investment in the construction of toilets.
C. Evaluation of “No toilet, No bride”
Lack of incentive
Rural Indian men build the toilets for the women to use in order to get married, but they themselves prefer to openly defecate instead to be seen as not weak and unmanly to their peers. Given the skewed gender ratio towards males, and population growth, OD rates will continue to stay relatively constant as few men use the toilets, even though the number of toilets available has increased.
Percentage of male and female toilet usage
Rural Indian men still choose to defecate in public even when they have access to functional toilets. In Haryana, 37 groups of men and women gave a much lower scoring to toilet usage by men as compared to the scores given to toilet usage among women when asked about their feedback on toilet usage in their respective villages. Only 55% of men use toilets as compared to 83% of women in Punjab.Whereas men do not see toilet construction as a need for their own use, thus the campaign has insignificant influence on men to use toilets.
Overall, men do not stop OD as they are less concerned or inconvenienced by the impacts of OD (2B), thus new methods are needed to persuade men to stop OD.
Section 5: Present Context in rural India
A. Darwaza Band Campaign (1)
Several videos have been launched within India under Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM). They include well-known actors and are delivered in a light-hearted fashion.
Figure 7: Screenshots of Darwaza Band Campaign videos with analysis
B. Evaluation of Darwaza Band Campaign
Catered towards the urban population as it is dependent on the internet, shown from the use of videos published on media platforms. However, because the majority of the rural population in India do not have access to the internet, with mobile internet penetration in rural areas is low, the reach of the campaign is limited.
Content advertised is not informative and does not explicitly educate the viewer on the impacts of OD and benefits of toilets.
Relationship between man and woman is not contextualised to marriage which would be a more effective way of communicating the message to men.
C. What is needed?
As a result of the ‘No toilet, No bride’ campaign, men have become the main open defecators (4C) with similar mindsets from before (2A). Thus, focusing on men as the target audience, women as the communicator, and tapping into the social context, would help reduce OD more significantly.
A significant proportion of rural Indians remain illiterate, especially women. Hence in order for advertising to be effective, it should focus heavily on audio and visual aids on radio and print media to get the message across.
Section 6: Advertising Campaign led by women to target men to use the latrines built (Project)
Figure 6: Communicative process overview
A. Aims of Communicative Process
Teach women that OD is wrong and empower them to speak out against OD so that men will listen to women.
B. Proposed plan
Phase 1
Phase 2
Aim
Change pre-existing social context: women are deemed as inferior and not as educated as their male counterparts (5C) to empower women
Provide women with information to give them confidence
Empower women to speak up and make it normal for the women to tell the man what to do
Role models though radio/poster
Bring women up to the same level as men
Poster
Debunk common myths about toilets
Provide Information on impacts of OD (2B, individual and community) and benefits of toilets
Criticise the men by linking to how they are causing the impacts
Features: Ensure that it is simple for the illiterate to understand and attract attention
Eye catching
Put in places that are highly visible
Diagrams and pictures
Minimal words
Radio show
Played during peak listenership hours (during lunch, after work) for wider reach
As there are many different languages in India, the usage of community radios which has high listenership rates in rural India would be needed to spread the message more effectively to different communities. Local celebrities (in individual states) could be used to garner interest and aid in translation to ensure the message quality does not degrade, by acting as the personalities.
C. Poster
Phase 1
Phase 2
Evaluation
D. Radio Show
Phase 1
Get them to listen to the radio and info later on
Radio drama revolving 2 characters Swaacchii and Bharat who are married. Swaacchii depicts an ideal woman that is educated and willing to voice out her opinions while Bharat represents a man that is
Phase 2
Evaluation
ANNEX
Sample Radio Script
Bharat: I’m Bharat (Hindi name for India)
Swaacchii: And I’m Swaacchii (sounds like swaachta meaning cleanliness in Hindi)
Bharat and Swaacchii: And this is the Swaarat show!
*sounds of door opening*
Swaacchii: Bharat, where are you going?
Bharat: To the fields Yaar..
Swaacchii: And what’s that bucket you are carrying in your hand? Could it be –
Bharat: *exasperated* Really, Swaachhii, it’s none of your business!
Swaacchii: So, you’re openly defecating? That’s not a good habit, is it huh?
Bharat: Hey, I do it in a private place – it’s alright.
Swaacchii: That’s not the issue here. It’s not about you, it’s about the rest of the village!
Bharat: What do you mean?
Swaacchii: Imagine me smearing faeces into your water tank. How would you feel?
Bharat: What does that even have to do with anything?
Swaacchii: Faeces can leak into the ground, you know. Once the water in the ground is contaminated, all you’ll be drinking from the well is –
Bharat: There’s a river nearby.
Swaacchii: Water flows downstream, and guess what’ll happen if those at the upriver village think the same as you?
Bharat: Nothing’s happened to us so far – I mean, we’re all fine.
Swaacchii: We have good immune systems because we are older. How about the children and elderly? You wouldn’t want to kill your son or daughter indirectly, would you? How would you start a family then?
Bharat: Alright, I get it that open defecation is bad for my loved ones. But what do I do now?
Swaacchii: Under SBM, toilets have been constructed everywhere – just use a communal one. Squat down, do your business, and you’ll be good to go!
Bharat: I don’t have a toilet.
Swaacchii: It’s alright. The government will provide subsidies to those who construct these toilets. Plus, after 5 years, you’ll be able to use the faeces as fertiliser for the crops you grow! It’s a long-lasting financial investment that’ll improve the lives of those around you.
Bharat: But how do I apply for these benefits?
Swaacchii: (talking about how you apply for subsidies)
Swaacchii and Bharat: Conclusion
Swaachii