The water supply and sanitation sector remains heavily subsidized around the world. Yet, the accounting of water supply and sanitation subsidies globally has proved challenging due to utility-level data limitations and their often implicit nature.

To accelerate the efforts to achieve universal sanitation coverage and to put focus on safe sanitation, the Prime Minister of India launched the Swachh Bharat Mission on 2nd October 2014.

Globally, 50% of the population relies on on-site sanitation systems (OSS) such as septic tanks and pit latrines and is, hence, in need of Fecal Sludge Management (FSM) solutions. India is a classic example, given that its government built more than 100 million toilets with the majority relying on OSS.

With less than 10 years to meet the UN's Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), action is still not happening at the speed or scale required - despite a groudswell of ambition and action from organisations of all sectors and sizes.

During the survey of 2,612 toilets reported by CPSEs to have been constructed, 200 toilets were not found constructed in the respective schools and 86 toilets were found to be only partially constructed. The non-existing and partially constructed toilets constituted 11 per cent of toilets surveyed.

New analysis reveals the number of children living in multidimensional poverty – without access to education, health, housing, nutrition, sanitation, or water – has increased by 15 per cent since the start of the pandemic.

The point of the report is to track (and promote) progress toward the Sustainable Development Goals, and the big thing standing in the way of that progress right now is the pandemic. People living just above the extreme poverty line who have fallen below it because of COVID-19 were obviously vulnerable despite not being officially poor.