Tracking expenditure for water, sanitation and hygiene in communities and social sector institutions : consolidated brief

This consolidated policy brief puts together the findings of two projects - Watershed - Capacity Building Support for Civil Society Organisations to Leverage Water and Sanitation Programmes in Bihar and Odisha supported by IRC, and Tracking and Analysing Budget Allocations and Utilisation for WASH by Rural Local Bodies supported by WaterAid India. It uses the Life Cycle Cost Approach for assessing the expenditure, and covers Gaya and Samastipur in Bihar and Nuapada and Ganjam in Odisha. It presents the key learnings from the projects, and also puts forth a way ahead for making decentralised budget and financing arrangements for Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) services a priority in the two States. With a greater emphasis on hygiene, in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, it suggests additional approaches that could be taken under these initiatives.

This paper is part of a Centre for Budget and Governance Accountability (CBGA) series on "Decentralised Public Finance for WASH: Policy and Practice Learnings", which is based on the two above mentioned projects.