Sanitation, Microcredit and Awareness - A Qualitative Analysis, 2019-2021

This study aimed to complement a Randomized Controlled Trial (RCT) conducted by the Institute for Fiscal Studies from 2015 to 2017 exploring the impact of sanitation microloans in rural Maharashtra (Latur and Nanded districts), combined with information provision and awareness raising. One of the main findings of the RCT was that adding the awareness raising to offering the new sanitation microloan product led to lower sanitation uptake than providing sanitation microloans only, with one in five loan takers who received the awareness constructing toilets compared with one in two who did not receive the loan (Attanasio et al. 2018). The qualitative study undertaken by the French Institute of Pondicherry set out to solve this puzzling finding. Given the time lag between the implementation of interventions and our survey, reconstructing the processes of subscription to the sanitation loan, their conversion into toilets and the use of the toilets proved to be very challenging. In addition to the timing problem, there were two other issues: we had difficulty interviewing the staff of the microcredit organization and the NGO in charge of awareness-raising, even though the survey protocol had considered them to be key informants; the pandemic and lockdown forced us to concentrate data collection in the last three months of the research contract. Ultimately, our answer to the question posed in the terms of reference is necessarily incomplete. Our observations mainly (1) provide insight into the structural barriers to toilet uptake, then give some reasons that (2) explain the diversity of behaviours toward sanitation loans, and their conversion to toilets. Our understanding of the structural factors explaining the reluctance to build toilets, however, allows us to (3) make some general conclusions about the limitations of interventions based solely on credit provision and awareness raising.