Making sense on sanitation: Rethinking the role of Information, Education and Communication (IEC) as a tool for participatory rural sanitation in Uttar Pradesh -Assessing possible policy lessons from Bangladesh

United Nations’ Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) placed the issue of sanitation on the top of global agenda. This study rethinks the role of Information, Education and Communication (IEC) to ensure participatory rural sanitation in Uttar Pradesh -a state in India, after empirically assessing the grass-root realities, especially, in the most backward areas –including tribal areas. Bangladesh has achieved phenomenal successes, - using IEC, as a community mobilisation tool in many fields, including rural sanitation. This study tries to draw on possible policy lessons from Bangladesh to strengthen the system of IEC in Uttar Pradesh, in order to succeed in the rural sanitation campaign. This study shows substantial correlations between the effective IEC interventions and increased sanitary behaviour change in the context of most backward areas of Uttar Pradesh, -having vulnerable rural population, and also highlights the dimension of equity in the provision of sanitation services. This study suggests that the failure of rural sanitation campaign in Uttar Pradesh is largely due to the absence of a local mechanism to understand, activate and sustain the techniques of interpersonal/intercommunity communication (IPC/ICC) in order to actively engage children, women and other agents to bring about lasting change in social norms and practices related to sanitation.