Mobile-based tracking system to ensure sustainability of a sanitation programme: experiences from four Indian states

India’s goal of achieving 100% sanitation coverage has been a long-standing one. While the recent push to eliminate open defecation has made significant progress taking India to a level of 61% coverage, the functionality of sanitary latrines and sustainability of open defecation free villages remain major challenges mainly due to the absence of a strong mechanism to track the progress of infrastructure and improvement in hygiene behaviours. The benefits of significant public investment made in the sanitation sector hence remain only partially realized. Against this backdrop, the Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN) under its ambitious multi-state sanitation initiative spread across Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Gujarat has introduced GPS enabled mobile-based monitoring system to track the progress of sanitation infrastructure and hygiene behaviours. The initiative with the help of AKVO flow has so far tracked 19400 units till January 2017 to get the completion status, quality of construction and awareness levels and behaviour pattern of targeted communities.