There have been remarkable achievements under the Government of India’s Total Sanitation Campaign (TSC) with a goal of ensuring universal rural sanitation coverage by 2012. Rural sanitation has tripled and the incentive programme has grown exponentially.

Nevertheless, there are considerable disparities in TSC’s performance between and within the states and districts, and the need now is to focus on sustaining the gains achieved so far and making progress in areas where impact has been limited. The Global Sanitation Fund (GSF) was created by the Water Supply and Sanitation Collaborative Council (WSSCC) to support these efforts and add value by complementing the already significant investment of the government to the sanitation and hygiene sector. The GSF intervention aims to stimulate momentum for improvement in sanitation and hygiene behaviour in four districts and four blocks in Assam and Jharkhand.

Using a combination of demand creation (such as Community-Led Total Sanitation (CLTS)) and supply side approaches (such as sanitation marketing) the GSF aims to contribute to demand creation for sanitation, hygiene promotion, and awareness generation among the targeted districts.

Lessons from implementation of improved sanitation and hygiene at scale in under-served locations are expected to encourage strengthened state-level institutions to adapt and scale up similar approaches state-wide and influence Sector Policy and practice at State and National Level.

nrmc India is the Executing Agency (EA) to implement the programme. The key responsibilities include program management, program design, Program implementation, grant management, providing technical support to sub-grantees, financial management and establishing a monitoring system.