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Building toilets and getting people to use them is critical for public health. We deployed a political ecology approach specifically to identify the multi-scalar political, economic, and environmental factors influencing toilet adoption in rural India. The research used ethnographic and technical methods in rural villages of West Bengal and Himachal Pradesh over the period September 2012 to May 2013. The elements of successful sanitation adoption depended on three factors (i.e., toilet tripod): (1) multi-scalar political will on the part of both government and NGOs over the long term; (2) proximate social pressure, i.e., person-to-person contact between rural inhabitants and toilets; (3) political ecology, i.e., assured access to water, compatible soil type, and changing land use. This research contributes to studies of sustainable development and global public health by developing a theory and framework for successful sanitation.

The provision of sanitation in India has attracted much attention, but research and policies focusing on gender in relation to sanitation often fail to focus on sanitation-related violence against women (VAW). This article focuses on research in Pune (in Maharashtra) and Jaipur (in Rajasthan). It offers evidence of slum-dwelling women's experiences of harassment and violence related to poor or absent sanitation facilities. In addition, it explores the strategies that women adopt to minimise risk and stress. Sanitation-related violence shows the connections between slum geographies and unequal intra-slum relationships of gender, caste, and economic and marital status, and the types of sanitation facilities available. These different identities shape women's experiences of VAW and they commonly blame men from 'outside' or 'other' groups, affecting their ability to act as a united group against violence. While sanitation is inadequate and inappropriate for women's needs across castes, community cohesion and the chances of collective action and advocacy to address sanitation needs are also compromised by tensions between groups in the slum.

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Household water insecurity has serious implications for the health, livelihoods and wellbeing of people around the world. Existing methods to assess the state of household water insecurity focus largely on water quality, quantity or adequacy, source or reliability, and affordability. These methods have significant advantages in terms of their simplicity and comparability, but are widely recognized to oversimplify and underestimate the global burden of household water insecurity. In contrast, a broader definition of household water insecurity should include entitlements and human capabilities, sociocultural dynamics, and political institutions and processes. This paper proposes a mix of qualitative and quantitative methods that can be widely adopted across cultural, geographic, and demographic contexts to assess hard-to-measure dimensions of household water insecurity. In doing so, it critically evaluates existing methods for assessing household water insecurity and suggests ways in which methodological innovations advance a broader definition of household water insecurity.

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For women and girls in low‐income areas, the consequences of inadequate sanitation include fear of harassment, experiences of violence, and psychosocial stress. When safe, usable toilets are not available, women and girls face three types of toilet insecurity: (1) the material reality for many women and girls that they do not have access to a toilet; (2) the risk of venturing out for open defecation if there is no toilet; and (3) having access to a public toilet, but one that is unusable (e.g., filthy) or unsafe (e.g., insufficient lighting), so that women and girls accept the risk of going for open defecation. WIREs Water 2016, 3:19–24. doi: 10.1002/wat2.1122 This article is categorized under: Engineering Water > Water, Health, and Sanitation