Context: According to a new report by the Wash Institute, India was responsible for the largest drop in open defecation since 2015.

• The Joint Monitoring Report also emphasised universal access to water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) to achieve the United Nations-mandated Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 6 in achieving universal access to basic water, sanitation and hygiene services.

India specific highlights of the report

• Within India, open defecation had been highly variable regionally since at least 2006, the report said.
• In 2006, the third round of the National Family Health Survey (NFHS) found open defecation to be practiced by less than 10 per cent of the population in four states and the Union Territory of Delhi, but by more than half the population in 11 states.
• By 2016, when the fourth round of the NFHS was conducted, open defecation had decreased in all states, with the largest drops seen in Himachal Pradesh and Haryana.

Progress on SDG 6

• The report also noted some progress towards the achieving SDG 6.
• SDG 6 states that ensuring availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all by 2030 entails that water must be accessible at source, available when needed and free from any contamination.
• Between 2016 and 2020, the global population with access to safely managed drinking water at home increased to 74 per cent, from 70 per cent.
• The report has shown an improvement in at-source water resources including piped water, boreholes or tubewells, protected dug wells, protected springs, rainwater and packaged or delivered water.
• Water sources are considered ‘accessible on premises’ if the point of water collection is within the dwelling, compound, yard or plot, or is supplied to the household through piped supply or tanks.
• Water is counted as ‘available when needed’ if households report having ‘sufficient’ water. For the purposes of global monitoring, drinking water is considered ‘free from contamination’ if the water is free and safe from contamination of bacteria like E coli.
• There was an increase in safely managed sanitation services to 54 per cent, from 47 per cent between 2016 and 2020.
• Onsite sanitation system, a system in which excreta and wastewater are collected, stored and / or treated on the plot where they are generated had shown a significant global increase.
• Globally, access to safely managed sanitation services increased over the 2000-2020 period by an average of 1.27 percentage points per year.
• The report also talked about hygiene, especially in the context of the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19).

What is WASH?

• WASH is an acronym that stands for "water, sanitation and hygiene".
• Universal, affordable and sustainable access to WASH is a key public health issue within international development and is the focus of the first two targets of Sustainable Development Goal 6 (SDG 6).
• Improving access to WASH services can improve health, life expectancy, student learning, gender equality, and other important issues of international development. This can reduce illness and death, and also affect poverty reduction and socio-economic development.