Socio-Cultural Impacts of Drinking Water and Sanitation Project on Local People A Case of Lekhnath Municipality

Abstract

The major objective of this study is to explore the impacts of the project (STWSS) among the people of Lekhnath Municipality after its establishment. To that end, research questions were raised and combinations of qualitative and quantitative methods were adopted. On the basis of the research objectives, the problems associated with the drinking water, health and sanitation facilities were analyzed and explained in detail. Further, the changes in their lifestyle have also been explored extensively. The study demands both exploratory as well as descriptive research design. Generally, the exploratory research design was used to show the various aspects of the problems of the study area before the project (STWSS) implementation, while the descriptive research design was used to describe the effects of the project (STWSS) on Lekhnath people. Observation, interview, key-informants interview, in depth- interview and focus group discussions were adopted to collect data. However, the primary data played a dominant role into drawing a valid conclusion. Some relevant and useful secondary data were also incorporated. Demographic information such as caste/ ethnicity, religion, occupation, education, age was reflected. Table, bar diagrams and pie charts were used to analyze the data. This research proposes to investigate the role of drinking water supply and sanitation system in bringing the changes in the lives of local people of Lekhnath Municipality. Before the project’s construction, people faced problem as they had to allocate for time for collecting water and they had little attention on other activities. But, now the continuous engagement in construction and management of drinking water project has changed their lifestyle. People now started to involve in other development activities due to availability of water. Both male and female member were actively participate in the project’s management and maintenance work. Now, people were satisfied with the project’s establishment. According to the study, 96.7 percent of the respondents had to use public tap before the project construction. Similarly, 98.4 percent of the respondents felt that the project construction has saved a large part of the time invested in fetching water. 77 percent of them express their view that the tendency of spreading water borne disease after the project construction is decreasing and 23 percent of them says it is decreasing rapidly. Likewise, 88.5 percent of the respondents have been able to use the saved time in other development activities.