Sanitation Coverage and Open Defecation Rate in Indian States: A Pooled Data Analysis

To fulfil the sanitation needs of the people, Government of India has implemented the several sanitation programmes during its planning period. Still there is a nearly 30 percent household having no sanitation /latrine facilities (National Family Health Survey-5, 2019-21). The enormous negative externalities of lack of sanitation facilities motivate us to measure sanitation situation across states in India and identify the factors that affect the sanitation coverage. Sanitation status across states has been measured in terms of changing sanitation coverage during the period 1998-99 to 2019-2020 and Open Defecation Rate (OD) during the period 1998-99 to 2015-16. To measure the influences of various social-economic and demographic conditions on the state level sanitation coverage; we applied the multi-variable regression framework. Our overall conclusion is that the sanitation coverage in a state is appeared to be high where the literacy rate, per capita net state domestic product (PCNSDP), concentration of SC/ST population is high whereas the state having a higher percentage of poor population, higher proportion Hindu population, higher share of rural population adversely affects the sanitation coverage in a state.