Who will empty India’s 100 million new toilets?

Improved sanitation is booming, but when the majority of new toilets connect to pits and septic tanks, where does it all go from there? A WLE study offers answers from across India.

India’s Swachh Bharat Mission constructed more than 100 million new toilets around the country between 2014 and 2019, aiming to end open defecation on a massive scale. Having largely succeeded, the program has changed the landscape of sanitation. For one thing, roughly two thirds of the new toilets sit above pits or septic tanks that now need to be emptied — and what lies within, referred to in sanitation circles as “fecal sludge”, is the next national challenge…