IP Journal of Nutrition, Metabolism and Health Science 2021;4(3):111–120 Content available at: https://www.ipinnovative.com/open-access-journals IP Journal of Nutrition, Metabolism and Health Science Journal homepage: https://www.jnmhs.com/ Original Research Article Factors influencing sustainability of open defecation free (ODF) status in rural India: A cross sectional study R K Mishra 1 , Ch Lakshmi Kumari 1 , P S Janaki Krishna 1, *, Maschendar Goud 1 1 Dept. of Sustainable Development, Institute of Public Enterprise, Hyderabad, Telangana, India ARTICLE INFO Article history: Received 17-08-2021 Accepted 28-09-2021 Available online 28-10-2021 Keywords: Sanitation Open Defecation Toilet Technology Water availability ABSTRACT Tackling a simple and sensitive concern of ‘Open Defecation (OD)’ is such a compounded and righteous challenge that enormous efforts and resources are needed to bring in the desired changes in the villages. Towards this, attaining open defecation free (ODF) status by providing toilet facilities to every household is the foremost step in rural sanitation programme under Swachh Bharat Mission – Gramin (SBM –G) being implemented by the Government of India. The present paper aims to examine the factors that have influence in attaining ODF status in rural areas. In this study, various parameters that contribute to attaining ODF status in the villages were identified and an extensive primary survey was conducted in 32,390 households across 686 rural villages in Krishna District of Andhra Pradesh, India. The empirical analysis of the data using a multinomial logistic regression model revealed that the factors such as water availability, safe excreta disposal, technology used for toilet construction and awareness on Swachh Bharat have an influence in achieving the open defecation free status in the villages to a greater extent. This is an Open Access (OA) journal, and articles are distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 License, which allows others to remix, tweak, and build upon the work non-commercially, as long as appropriate credit is given and the new creations are licensed under the identical terms. For reprints contact: reprint@ipinnovative.com 1. Introduction Sanitation has been considered as one of the prime indices in measuring the human development indices. Availability of better sanitation facilities has also been considered as one of the basic amenities in measuring economic growth. Out of total world population 2.4 billion people still do not have access to basic sanitation facilities and 900 million are openly defecating. As part of a global health and development agenda by the year 2030, the proportion of people without sustainable access to sanitation has been falling far short of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The major deficit has been identified in sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. 1 Only 68 percent of the world’s population have access to basic sanitation. In Sub-Saharan African and South Asia 70 percent and 53 percent of the population do not have basic * Corresponding author. E-mail address: janaki@ipeindia.org (P. S. Janaki Krishna). sanitation facilities. Huge amount of expenditure is required in order to provide better sanitation facilities. To mention few countries, it is equivalent to 6.4 percent of GDP in India, 6.3 percent of GDP in Bangladesh, 7.2 percent of GDP in Cambodia, 2.4 percent of GDP in Niger, and 3.9 percent of GDP in Pakistan annually. 1.1. Open defecation: global scenario In the present day global scenario removal of OD has occupied a prime place in developing countries. According to UNICEF and WHO 2 report compared to 1990 OD has declined by ten percentage points in 44 countries and by more than 20 percent points in 23 countries in 2015. Fifteen countries have reduced open defecation by more than 25 percent. Ethiopia achieved the largest decrease in the proportion of the population practicing open defecation (from 92 per cent in 1990 to 29 per cent in 2015), a reduction over five times greater than the regional average https://doi.org/10.18231/j.ijnmhs.2021.021 2582-6301/© 2021 Innovative Publication, All rights reserved. 111