Dr Bansi Malde co-wrote a blog post on her research into sanitation in India, which featured in the Ideas for India blog. Rural Indian households report lack of affordability as the main reason for not having a toilet. Bansi’s article investigates – through an experiment in rural Maharashtra – whether microcredit labelled for sanitation can increase sanitation investments. It finds that targeted households demand the sanitation loans, and toilet uptake increases by 9 percentage points; however, roughly half of the loans were not used for sanitation.
Labelled loans and sanitation investments
