Most people living in rural Indian villages defecate openly outside, without using a toilet or latrine. In 2004, as a supplement to its ongoing Total Sanitation Campaign (TSC), the government of Maharashtra conducted a randomized, controlled experiment to study the effect of a sanitation intervention. In Ahmednagar district of Maharashtra, 30 villages were randomly assigned to a community-level sanitation motivation treatment group and 30 villages to a control group. Eighteen months later, surveyors measured how much the average height of children in the treatment and control groups had changed.
Links:
[1] http://admin.indiaenvironmentportal.org.in/reports-documents/coming-short-without-sanitation-community-sanitation-program-indian-government
[2] http://admin.indiaenvironmentportal.org.in/category/publisher/water-and-sanitation-program
[3] http://admin.indiaenvironmentportal.org.in/category/thesaurus/rural-sanitation
[4] http://admin.indiaenvironmentportal.org.in/category/thesaurus/ahmadnagar-d
[5] http://admin.indiaenvironmentportal.org.in/category/thesaurus/maharashtra
[6] http://admin.indiaenvironmentportal.org.in/category/thesaurus/total-sanitation-campaign
[7] http://admin.indiaenvironmentportal.org.in/category/thesaurus/children