Sanitation citizenship: state expectations and community practices of shared toilet use and maintenance in urban India

Abstract

Although India declared itself “open defecation free” in 2019, critics charge that its national urban sanitation campaign, Swachh Bharat Mission–Urban (SBM-U), has failed. SBM-U provided community toilets in informal settlements where household latrines were unviable, delegating their upkeep to local governments and users. Initially, these community toilets were used. However, the failure to maintain and repair them resulted in a reversion to open defecation, forcing the state to reconsider its decision to withdraw after construction. We use the SBM-U to develop a framework of “sanitation citizenship”, which emerges through sanitation infrastructure’s use and disuse, and emerges over its life course. We trace how mutual expectations and everyday practices of citizenship by the state and users aligned and fractured during the construction, maintenance and repair phases of community toilets. We argue that the changing material condition of infrastructure is critical to negotiations over mutual obligations and definitions of the citizenship contract.