Making a case for the innovation with special focus on –
The innovation successfully attempted by the Chief Minister’s Office (CMO), Govt. of Uttar Pradesh (GoUP) brings forth a range processes and tools that could be replicated in flood contexts with reasonable certainty and with slight customization in other varied contexts. The CMO recognised that the innovation has two sides : the first and the foremost priority is to help the community with an upgraded facility and insulate the existing sources from turning non-functional during the flood and the second is to elicit futuristic learning to aid and integrate other asset-building schemes. The Water Aid and PROACT underlined the fact at the beginning of the assignment that Hand pumps may be seen as an outgoing facility – hence, the success of the experience must be accrued to bridge gaps in asset-creation schemes for flood affected areas. It was deliberated that the experience would prolong the life of the DWS assets – yet must leave technical tools and community-process related experiences for such schemes to adopt in future.
In the following pages a broad description has been submitted justifying how few learning from the innovation could be adopted for other key government schemes.
Justification on why key learnings from the innovation could be adopted in future : Case of select central government schemes
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Illustrated schemes |
People’s participation |
Technology; cost & design options |
Significance index |
Convenience quotient |
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Rural drinking water : National Rural Drinking Water Program (NRDWP) |
Concepts of ‘people’s participation’ and that of ‘cost & design options’ have been familiar to rural drinking water & sanitation. However, there has been a sustained tendency by the implementing entities not trying to arrive at appropriate design and cost-based solutions. Starting from platforms & well-laid disposal drains to super-structures of sanitary latrines, state entities have been rather indolent in trying and innovating close to what their clients sought to have. While cost-sensitivity for rural clients should be taken as an opportunity for innovation, in India there are demonstrated cases of dividends accrued from executing cost & design options (West Bengal) – a state like UP with diverse contexts, sought to attempt more experimentations & innovations. The innovation brings little change in designs of h/p platform to pull out millions of users in the flood-affected areas of UP from the proven health threat caused by contaminated water and lack of hygiene surrounding the water sources. Such innovations attempted in rural sanitation in the same context could prove wonders. |
Till a few years back, UP had coverage of rural piped water supply of 3%. The serious lack of coverage; thereby, turning susceptible health of all consumers– is indeed an opportunity to plan a brisk progress. A carefully considered significance index; where the parameters define all right issues – pre & post implementation, could immensely help realizing flawlessness and creating a quality standards ecosystem. |
nCQ should be a must tool for assessment of all community services including drinking water supply and sanitation. nCQ could be replicated for piped watr supply systems while planning public stand-posts. |
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Sanitation : Swachha Bharat Abhiyan (SBA) |
Individual family sanitation latrines in rural Uttar Pradesh demand diverse and intricate design & technology options. To cater to women’s inherent sense of privacy, boosted by a large segment of growing adolescent & muslim demography, inherent lack of piped water and unsafe disposal of excreta (even in case of honeycomb leaching pit designs) makes the topic complex and a fit case for technology innovation. Interestingly, domestic and public hygiene components also ask for technology & design innovation, which so far have followed conventional paradigms yielding no much benefit to impact rural health. An imaginatively evolved significance index could cut out the core issues in (a) design & cost options, and (b) plausible technology inputs. |
In case of sanitation, nCQ emerges as a more significant opportunity. Minute aspects of design of sanitation latrines; considering demands for privacy to comfort of children, the old and that of the ailed, the nCQ could help learn about measures to make a unit that satisfies all. More importantly, the variety of users could express the barriers that they feel are imposing – hence reduce value of the asset. |
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Rural housing : Indira Awas Yojana (IAY)/ Lohiya Awas Yojana |
Very little opportunity is viewed in enabling the beneficiary family to participate in the business of commissioning their own dwelling unit; whereas this should just be the opposite. Count of family members to its livelihood practices, families preferences – allow the family to do some little tweaking and adjustments etc. could create serious sense of participation and hence ownership – something the innovation could show a roadmap. |
The scheme provision makes the design a case of utmost compromise if viewed against very basic & rationale needs of a family from BPL category. The participation of each family in terms of making cost and labour contribution could make the shape and nature of the dwelling space so much better. Provisions of latrines and kitchen, planning & arranging for sewer/ disposal etc. are areas seeking natural integration with such schemes – could be core areas of design improvement. |
Quality standards to design issues, contextual demands and fulfilment of basic needs of a habitat etc. are key components that could find easy space in a significance index customised for such programs. A careful assessment of program provisions and documentation of the generic implementation process could open up a range of remedial measures that housing schemes must consider – given abysmal quality of these units. |
A range of non-physical issues related to dwellers’ common specific convenience, may be build into a nCQ. Such could be on either side of the quotient – however, could certainly impart new learnings on the implementing agencies about what potential dwellers consider as core benefits and barriers. One must consider – govt. provisions meant for the poor are often delivered with some degree of disdain and even a sense of contempt. Poor’s aspirations are seldom viewed carefully; not considered as crucial inputs to conceptualization and planning of the program. A carefully perceived nCQ could facilitate radical inputs to these areas of govt. schemes. |
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Social
sector
infra
structure |
· Schools, health & ICDS centres
· Panchayat bhawans & community centres etc.
· Disaster relief centres etc. |
These schemes are predominant domains of the state apparatus and access of concepts like people’s participation is rather restricted; informally albeit. Not just for the sake of convenient and structured implementation, the scheme guidelines provide a linear roadmap, the plausible diversity from people’s active participation is adopted to not entertain specificity and ‘complexity’. Most of such infrastructure schemes cause roots to corrupt practices; slow and delayed administrative proceedings create a favourable ecosystem, people’s participation is avoided because it can cause pressure on the govt. set up to deliver in committed quality and time. A large scheme such as the innovation, demonstrated that the theory behind the idea of people’s participation is workable and stands true to all perceived benefits.
The typical hardware engineering and design areas, newer technology etc. are taken care with reasonable compliance to guidelines. However, since the technical and operational guidelines don’t embark on anything that is intangible; the software aspects of these schemes remain absent. Each of these items mentioned here |
These schemes make provisions for community assets; however, catering to diverse range of people with specific purposes. People coming from various demographic, social, gender sections feel needs for diverse types and levels of comfort in accessing these assets. The two tools could help to –
- Learn; get feedback from the clients about their preferences in terms of tweaking of hardware components/ appropriateness of physical aspects of the assets etc. and/ or ensuring a range of intangible needs; ensuring allied facilities like toilet and drinking water, provisions for extreme summer and winter etc., support systems for the old and ailed/ disabled persons etc. and for special arrangement for women;
- Understand quality service demands – within a supportive info. ecosystem. E.g. in case of ICDS/ health, centres, clear display of procedures and a ready enquiry system helps – all application forms etc., if any should be accessible readily. Unavailability of these could be attributed as barriers thereby drastically affecting clients perceptions about benefits from the asset.
- The operational guidelines issued to standardise quality of the services provided; often are not reviewed against best practices/ instances produced by its compliance. The nCQ could consider building guideline parameters build into it and facilitate analytical learning;
- Finally, as post-implementation tools, the two could be treated as tools for incentivising implementation entities based on objective assessment of good performances. |
As indicated above, the aforementioned learnings would need to be promoted for state officials, especially district magistrates as young leaders in various districts, to instill confidence to strike well considered innovations and close them with objectives fully realized. The technicalities of such could be unpacked and be presented in lucid terms with multi-dimensional depiction of the lessons. The water aid and organizations like these must continue its support and respond to such furtherance – including future research needs.
Background
PROACT was assigned to conduct an investigative study to appraise several aspects of a UP-government scheme to raise platforms of hand pumps located in flood prone areas of Uttar Pradesh, notified for approx. 2,500 villages in 21 districts. The assignment was instituted by the Chief Minister’s Office (CMO), which indeed made the initiative to set on the scheme. The scheme was inspired by an innovative pilot conducted in an Eastern Uttar Pradesh district modelling the scheme along expectations of the flood affected community. The innovation strived through a challenging techno-financial trajectory and made serious impact on the ground – the community, represented by the local governments making it an acceptable model.
While undertaking the study, PROACT was mandated to analyse the contour and processes involved in implementation of the scheme. The tools conceptualised and applied upon to enable an analytical observation on the scheme have been categorised and defined clearly; significance index being one of them.
Concept and relevance -
The tool was conceptualised for an assessment of the decisions made to create/ alter DWS facilities and withstand impact of floods. While on a hindsight, the tool seemed to invite few elements in making a pre-commissioning decision creating/ altering a drinking water facility, not along for an India mark II hand pump but also for public stand posts provided with a piped water supply system.
Premise of the tool is based on objective appraisal of decision made by the implementing agency to pick right locations with valid (a) popular access to the facilities and (b) contextual requirements. However the tool begins with an assessment of post-commissioning (c) status of technical quality and design of the facility.
Put together the three elements, the study defined its methodology to appraise significance of creating/ altering a DWS facility against the categories of (a) low, (b) moderate, and (c) high significance; as defined by scores.
The tool helped the study team to build specific scope for sampling _ locations/ facilities to be incorporated in the study _ for deeper, cleaner understanding and in-depth analysis. The tool defined below 50% score to be attributed as low significance and scores above 80% as high significance. All facilities falling between the two, attributed as moderate significance. While the facilities scored along moderate and high significance were considered for in-depth study and analysis, the facilities scoring as low significance, were kept beyond the study.
(Copied verbatim from the website)Reference :http://ascelibrary.org/
Water-supply engineers often face the task of designing new pipe networks at a low cost, or of rehabilitating the existing networks. In this technical note, a simple optimality criterion called the significance index is defined. This index can be effectively used for the rehabilitation of existing networks. This index can also be slightly modified for use in the optimal design of new networks. The utility of this index for the rehabilitation of networks is demonstrated by its application to an existing network. The use of this index in the optimization of networks is illustrated by the application to an example network. The effectiveness and limitations of these indices are presented in here.
Read More: http://ascelibrary.org/doi/abs/10.1061/(ASCE)0733-9429(1995)121%3A11(833)
Framework adopted – key elements
A brief description of the elements covered in the framework goes as follows.
Weighing scores – Three key elements have been considered to weigh to determine significance of an asset/ facility created under the innovation; which indeed is about turning public assets into all-weather improved facilities. Highest weight has been assigned to the first parameter that the implementation agency could control completely and outcomes could be well-predicted - - construction and design quality. The parameter/ criterion recognises issues that embed guidelines related to unified standard and quality of the assets being created. It was considered that score to be assigned for these sub-parameters should be equal.
Criteria – 1 : Construction & design quality
Sub-criteria |
Particulars |
Score(s) assigned |
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Proper site selection |
One must consider, the assets identified for intervention were meant for accessing drinking water during the crisis of floods; hence were provided for 1-2 units every village. Considering even yet smooth access to these in the crisis period, one would need to meticulously consider the distribution of the village demography and gauge community/ segment specific needs. Wide consultation with communities, considering their specific needs and imaginative selection of sites that could satisfy the highest proportion of h/p users in the village was a clear guidance to the implementation partners. |
10 |
Design quality |
The h/p users access these hand pumps, during normal or flood days, from a range of age & gender segments and other varieties of the demography. The design of the raised platforms of the hand pumps make these tougher or convenient for drawing water. In some cases, it was perceived that the raised assets could only be accessed through boats while the areas get inundated – and the stairs may get submerged. The platforms raised by, in some cases 7-8 feet, may bear risk of being crowded and therefore rush. Railings around the platform and on sides of the stairs, run and rise of the stairs etc. are key design aspects that could make the assets under innovation go either way _ worse than normal conditions or improved. |
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Construction quality |
The study team considered the aspect construction quality to be of extremely important because the community in many instances have made contribution towards alteration of the change. Whether or not the quality standards as guided were complied and the plasters etc. were undertaken properly. |
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Disposal & hygiene |
Finally, while the innovation was being conceptualised, the key officials at the CMO considered the post-flood unhygienic conditions and health hazards caused by those. The flood affected areas of UP are rather consistent to observed health disorders caused soon after the floods recede, primarily because of contaminated drinking water and poor hygienic conditions. The raised platforms being constructed indeed create a condition of better hygiene in post-flood scenarios, especially to collect safe water from h/ps and conduct few essential domestic activities. Considering the fact, the significance index looks into the aspects of (a) disposal of water and (b) developing conditions to maintain good level hygiene by the user community. |
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The innovation took into consideration even distribution of the critical assets so that the period of crisis during the floods could be met with some degree of ease. Logically, therefore, it becomes paramount for the planners to see proper user-distribution across the facilities being created rather than geographic or generic demographic scenario. The second parameter is about user-participation along the interventions made under the innovation. Scoring weights in this have been perceived little stringently on errors that the implementing agencies might have committed or vice versa.
Criteria – 2 : Participation parameters
Sub-criteria |
Particulars |
Score(s) assigned |
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Single user |
Instances were found in certain cases where h/p platforms raised were selected considering few ‘convenient’ aspects. Often hand pumps improved along a road ends up serving one solitary family. The argument rendered by the implementing agencies in such cases was that these h/ps could serve the travellers and that the roads generally don’t get inundated; hence, the h/ps are more accessible. The conditions of the hand pumps visited by the study team; however, rendered contrary justifications. Physical verification of h/p sites suggested that the poorer community, where user-load on h/ps is relatively high and remote locations where such communities are inhabited, seek greater priority and provision of such interventions. The road-side locations are rarely inhabited by the poor; rather, relatively resourceful families settle in such prime locations. These resourceful families seem more potential to access solutions than those poor and affected in remote and inaccessible locations.
Often, hand pups improved in such single-family-based use have been found a serious and intentional violation of the standard guidelines. The Significance index therefore weighs high negative score on such cases; if found. |
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User-base more than 5 |
The next three sub-criteria of participation were defined with higher degrees of participation. Distribution of such critical resources that may prove to be a cushion between communities’ health – to the extent of life & death, was considered essential to qualify relevant decision of the implementing agencies. Considering the size of the settlements in villages in the flood affected areas of Uttar Pradesh and also the way a cluster of families access and use hand pumps, user-base was defined. The scores assigned, if used in hindsight, would incentivise the implementing agencies’ decision making for interventions around high user-base. |
5 |
User-base between 5 & 10 |
10 |
User-base more than 10 |
30 |
With the impact of climate change increasingly visible on the ground, pattern of monsoon as well as the consequential floods is changing briskly on year to year basis; the pattern has been rather erratic in last two decades. Besides gradual geomorphic alterations in low-lying landscape of the flood-areas, velocity of running floods, to extent of water-flow & periodicity of water logging etc. are all changing. Also, as the infrastructure projects are dominating the landscape on every year basis, especially rural roads, space for natural drainage is getting interrupted and eventually shrinking. There are more evident locations in the flood regions of Uttar Pradesh that have turned into water-locked areas for significant periods of a year due to unplanned and unimaginative road construction designs. Water locked areas in the flood region is increasing; some observe, the intensity of floods getting sharper; destructive sometimes.
The pattern of floods is changing in different ways : around spatial inundation, duration of water logging, drainage trajectories and speed & quantum of flow of drainage etc. The flood regions of Uttar Pradesh also have thousands of kilometres of protective embankments along rivers and also several thousand kms of canal networks. These all work against the mechanics that naturally counter-flood flood impact or those man-made for the same purpose. The final and third parameter is aimed to gauge effectiveness of decisions made by the implementing agencies and score the hand pumps selected for the study accordingly.
Criteria – 3 : Flood impact
Sub-criteria |
Particulars |
Score(s) assigned |
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High & regular |
Not all locations and communities suffer the hardest and severest forms of floods – but those subject to such conditions on a regular basis, must get a priority in response from the state. These are the communities generally located in low lands and often on river banks and away from the main roads. Reaching out to such communities and aiding them to withstand impact of floods is all that was expected from the implementing agencies engaged in the innovation. All such locations identified for an intervention under the innovation get high scores. |
30 |
Low & regular |
These are locations where flood impact have remained consistent; rather, unaffected from developmental interventions and the factors that could have altered its nature over the years. The nature of floods in these areas is mild; however, maintains high consistency over the years. Interventions in these locations and for the communities inhabited therein should be attributed as excellent decisions by the agencies implementing the innovation. |
10 |
High & seldom |
Breach of embankments and flash floods caused by high pouring in the hilly-terai regions of Nepal etc. cause sudden devastating floods. Although such occurrence of floods have declined over the years, the last reported some 15 years ago, there are locations that fall susceptible to such incidence within the flood regions of UP. In view of possibility of recurrence and impact on the assets being upgraded, decisions to such instances are poultry – almost none. |
5 |
Low & seldom |
There are areas, for instance in the cities that are located in the flood region of UP, indeed come with plenty of alternatives. Taking up such areas for the intervention could be attributed as to make a compromise with the innovation; hence, high negative score assigned for such. |
-10 |
The study contemplated three categories based on the measure of significance index : all h/ps scoring below 50 were rated as low significance, and all those above 80 were attributed as having assigned high significance. The remaining between the two; i.e. score of 50 and 80 were assigned as medium significance.
Applicability –
The significance index was applied for each of the hand pumps where interventions were contemplated as part of the innovation. The tool assisted the conduct of the study in terms of scientific assessment of best practices and validity of the standards and guidelines perceived for the innovation and picking only those h/ps where the standards and guidelines issued for the innovation was complied to a decent degree. The h/ps that were assigned “low significance”, were not considered for in-depth study considering supply-end lacunae and negligence in proper delivery of the scheme. The tool applied as a pre-study tool for PROACT to attain qualitative sampling, indeed emerged as a key tool for post-implementation assessment of interventions that pertains to components making provision for services to community members and satisfaction of the users. The tool makes special case for adoption in rural infrastructure projects by the M&E and quality tracking entities.
Reference : https://omnivideo.wordpress.com/2008/10/28/what-is-a-convenience-quotient/
https://www.forrester.com/
(Copied verbatim from the website) What is a Convenience Quotient? : A Convenience Quotient (CQ) is something we debuted today at our Forrester Consumer Forum in Dallas. It’s a new metric we have devised to summarize how convenient your product/service/channel is to consumers.
In concept it’s straightforward : Convenience = Benefits – Barriers
Basically, the convenience your product offers is a function of the benefits you offer minus the barriers that stand in your consumers’ way. If you offer tremendous benefits, people will overcome great barriers to get at them. If you offer modest benefits, even the slightest barrier will stand in your way. An example I offered today in my speech is depicted below in the slide (which you can click on to see a bigger version of).
In this example, you see the way the CQ works. You start from 0, you add up the benefits you provide (that’s the tricky part, obviously, and we’ve developed an approach to doing this which will show up in our research) on a scale from 0 to 1. Then you subtract the barriers that stand in your way. If you end up with a positive score, it means you have more benefits than barriers whereas if you end up with a negative score, well you know that negative scores are never good.
This example shows how CQs might work in the case of a banking website when a customer needs help with a serious issue (lost ATM card, missing deposit, etc.). I ran through sample scores that different alternatives might have: FAQ = 0 (few benefits, few barriers, cancel out); email = -.2 (many barriers, uncertain benefit); 800 number = .05 (some barriers, decent benefits); online chat help = .2 (many benefits, few barriers when done right).
It’s an important concept that we’ll be developing more fully in our research over the next year and I’m already getting smart questions and comments from forum attendees about it, so look for me to talk about it more on this blog as it relates to video entertainment.
Concept and relevance -
Hand pumps for use of collecting drinking water or any other service to cater to larger community, such assets in a rural setting in Uttar Pradesh and making an access to such, defines the element of social domination and the concerned power equation. Making an uninterrupted access to control over these assets become crucial elements in use of and benefits to be accrued from such by various segments in a village. Insights related to the social dynamics around such assets and the resultant thematic implication is something that state-based sector agencies badly lack. Mostly engineers define technical and spatial specifications in installation of these assets, ignoring social elements and that of community dynamics around such installations. Of late, state agencies have been guided to engage and take support from civil society organizations (CSO) to bring in such elements in the planning systems alongside technical and design parameters.
The intervention under the innovation considered a solitary objective to guarantee safe drinking water in crisis days of floods (content). However, the tool also brings in issues related to its ‘continuity’ –viz. repair & maintenance etc. As part of convenience measures, how the asset is going to be for people not having the best of physical abilities - - disables, old and the minors (convergence) and whether the users feel confident to protect the assets from misuse by others (control) etc. While these are not crucial considerations in a scenario of flood-crisis, these prove very important when one considers community ownership of responsibilities and management of the assets once the state-entities withdraw.
Framework adopted –
The tools considered countering components as (a) services and (b) barriers. While the barriers were defined as practical attributes in accessing and managing the asset in simple terms; the services have been seen in the backdrop of four key aspects : Content (primary & sole objective of the innovation), control, continuity and convergence – the latter three to be assigned with the govt. sector entity and the local government. The services issues deal into the following sub-issues a part of the four key aspects and embed technical dimensions such as Operational, repair & maintenance and site selection etc. One could justifiably find here; if an implementing agency is keeping into consideration significance index parameters, scores in nCQ would certainly surge.
Service-issues
(attributed as product-benefits)
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Content |
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Control |
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Quality of water : safe & potable |
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Uninhibited access, |
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Clean hygienic source & surroundings |
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Can restrict others from mis-/ over-use |
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Adequate supply/ discharge |
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Organic – users from own community |
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Continuity |
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Convergence |
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All-year sustained services |
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Serves other allied domestic works |
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My individual use is guaranteed |
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Easy & comfortable use/ no drudgery |
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Assured repairs & maintenance |
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Children & old - all can use |
The perceived barriers in the tool refer to practical aspect of high volume of operation and crowding etc. – highly plausible in floods situation. Considering many hand pumps would turn defunct, the users from different community would be compelled to access very few selected one with raised platform. The sense of not being able to use one’s own regular hand pump could creep imposing a psychological influence - - perhaps same for those community members who see “outsides’ approach their regular hand pump. The barriers have been listed as below -
Problems
(attributed as barriersin obtaining smooth and quality services)
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Distance; difficult access |
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(Adverse) psychological influence |
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Crowded; high load of users |
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Poor operation & high rate of breakdown |
The responders were requested to score against these parameters in number (out of 5 or 10) or in %, whatever they felt comfortable. Averaged out scores were formulated as suggested before. A sample tool looked as below.
Applicability; analysis thereof –
As indicated above, the nCQ was measured on a scale of -1 to +1. Considering limited quantum of barriers (4) compared to services (12), the nCQ is always likely to remain in positives – unless of course, the services are not at all deliverables and barriers are extraordinarily imposing.
The tool was applied for all responders that were identified for registering a testimony. The individual quotients are observed almost as mirror image of the narratives submitted in testimonials. The quotients were collated to seek a pattern in the adjacent chart – enabling a finer analysis of how villagers seem to consider the intervention as expressed through the numbers. As broadly attributed, the four dimensions have been indicated with prominent conclusions – opening for further scope to present arguments. Not an elaborate analysis, presented here analysis of few points.
§ Content : In all parameters, quotients have been nearly perfect – a clear indication that the user-community is convinced that despite crisis of such usable assets amidst floods, these are going to deliver adequately. Most importantly, highest quotient reported in the sub-criteria of quality of water : safe & adequate - - suggests that perceived target of the innovation was spot on. Also that the raised platforms of the hand pumps are going to ensure the very susceptible aspects of hygienic conditions of surroundings.
§ Control: Erratic along the 3 sub-criteria, the user-community feels guaranteed on the aspect of making uninhibited access to the sources; however, are not confident to be able to stop others from misusing/ overusing the source (even in crisis days of floods – when apparently the sources would get crowded). Also, the responders seem to realise the fact that amidst resource-crunch, all divergent sections of the user community would need to share the limited number of usable hand pumps with raised platforms.
§ Convergence: Considering curtailed user-time in the days of floods, the responders realise that attaining convergence-services is unlikely. The responders registered clear low quotient on demographic segments that are unlikely to use the raised hand pumps – children and old - - perhaps, disables also. They also recognise the practical un-viability to perform other domestic works on the hand pumps - - perhaps to be used by many at a time. And on the issues of no drudgery – one may consider why such a relatively high quotient on hand pumps with quite a few stairs to climb? The sense that the study team observed amongst the users is that a comparative assessment on normal flood days when they need to cover a long distance to collect water.
§ Continuity: The user community is quite confident of they making adequate individual use of the source and so too all along the year – a service which the source is going to ensure. However, as they meet a supply-side issue; repair and maintenance of the asset, considering the track record – they feel tentative.
The above four bullets generate a range of relevant analysis for the sector entities; which the CMO is incumbent to appraise to them in terms of recommendations or issuance of guidelines.