Water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) services levels remain stubbornly low in rural India despite high levels of public expenditure during recent decades. In many areas, this is a result of service levels slipping back for reasons that include inadequate protection of water sources (both...

Using information in the public domain and data from a pilot study, this paper argues that adoption of life-cycle cost approaches (LCCA) could play a significant role in rectifying this situation by providing a framework for identifying and plugging gaps in the present pattern of expenditure. It...