Rural Sanitation in India: Achievements, Trends and Challenges

P. Siva Ram, Ph.D. in Sociology, is a Senior Faculty in (CHRD) and (NIRD), Hyderabad under the Ministry of Rural Development, Government of India and Guwahati Regional Centre NIRD. Currently, he is a coordinating and leading a consultancy project on “National Level Key resource Centre (NLKRC) on Drinking Water and sanitation”, Ministry of Rural Development. He has attended more than 100 seminars, workshops, and symposiums in India. He has published several papers in the national and international journals. He authored two books.

Dr. R. Ramesh is a Professor at the Institute for Ocean Management, Anna University, Chennai, India. He received his MPhil and Phd in Environmental Sciences from the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India and another doctorate in Earth and Planetary Sciences from McGill University, Montreal, Canada. His current reseaerch interests include coastal ecosystem management, global climate change and biogeochemical cycles in coastal and riverine ecosystems. He is recipient of the Department of Science and Technology's (DST) BOYSCAST Award and the Indian National Science Academy's (INSA) Exchange Award to conduct advanced research on globalclimate change at Harvard University, USA in 1994 and at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry, Mainz, Germany during 1996-97 respectively. he has to his credit more than 50 research papers published in leading international journals. He has authored a book and edited five others relating to coastal environment and water resources management. Prof. Ramesh has been operating several research projects sponsored by Government of India as well as international funding agencies.

Dr. Y. Gangi Reddy (1957), Associate Professor at National Institute of Rural Development, Hyderabad has been working in the field of rural development for the last 25 years. He did his Post Graduation in Commerce from SV University. He has done his Ph. D in 1994 on the “status of rural industrialization in draught prone region” from the SK University. A law graduate from Osmania University.Before joining national Institute of Rural Development, he working in Khadi and Village Industries Commission, Mumbai for about 2 years and worked as a Lecturer in commerce in SSBN Degree College, SK University, Anantapur. He has six books to his credit apart from 25 articles published in different reputed journals of both national and international and about 10 book chapters. He has been associated with number of national and international training programmes on various aspects of rural development with a focus on micro enterprise promotion, Tecnology transfer and marketing of rural products. He has conducted several research studies on various dimensions of self employment, rural non-farm sector, micro credit and micro-enterprises, technology transfer, rural infrastructure, rural marketing etc.. During his stay at NIRD he had an opportunity to associate himself with the organization of rural Credit Melas as part of his interest in rural marketing. He also had an opportunity to work with ILO studies on child labour. He had an opportunity to visit Japan and Bangladesh during his service at NIRD.