Arghyam has decided to look more closely at the sanitation space to identify certain areas where it can work towards attaining total sanitation in rural areas of India. In this context, with behaviour change being identified as one of the critical issues, Arghyam organized a one-day consultation on Behaviour Change Communication (BCC) for sanitation on 1 August 2012 at Bangalore to delve into the issue of poor usage of individual household latrines and the reasons behind this.

The objectives of conducting this consultation were to understand issues in Information Education Communication (IEC) and BCC and to gain a deeper understanding of current efforts to address behaviour change in the Total Sanitation Campaign (now renamed as the Nirmal Bharat Abhiyan). The aim was also to understand issues such as why and how some communication initiatives have worked, what are the geographical and cultural diversities that communication needs to address; why communication has not gained scale or in some cases has been neglected? This consultation showcased examples of communication successes in other development areas, as well as the BCC efforts undertaken by some state governments.

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