PRIA’s efforts at making urban governance transparent, accountable and responsive began more than a decade ago. Our endeavours have been to create mechanisms for engaging citizens to participate in the planning and implementation of city improvement programmes, and to embed these processes in the city’s governance mechanism.
Over the past 3 years, Engaged Citizens, Responsive City project supported by the European Union has built 250 Settlement Improvement Committees (SICs) as organisations of the urban poor in Ajmer, Jhansi and Muzaffarpur, empowering urban poor communities to demand basic sanitation services in their settlements.
City level SIC forums in all the three cities have become vibrant and active in raising voice of the urban poor. They facilitate exchange of experiences amongst SIC members, help initiate dialogues and negotiations with city authorities and other stakeholders, and help communities articulate their needs and facilitate their participation in city level sanitation planning, implementation and monitoring.
Comprehensive household enumerations in informal settlements on sanitation services in Ajmer, Jhansi and Muzaffarpur were instrumental in identification of households without individual toilets, providing real-time data to municipal corporations to achieve various targets under Swachh Bharat Mission-Urban (SBM-U).
City-wide sanitation surveys in Ajmer and Jhansi generated reliable and critical data to municipal corporations for sanitation planning in both cities. Identification of major gaps in sanitation services, such as solid waste management, drainage, sewerage, enabled 168 SICs to prepare settlement level sanitation service improvement proposals. Of these, 133 proposals have received attention from municipal corporations.
A study on the Status of Women Sanitation Workers and An Assessment of the Status of Public and Community Toilets was also undertaken in Ajmer.