There are many lacunae that needs to be dealt with as far as public toilets: construction, usage and upkeep are concerned.
Uniform Design: In many cases the design of these toilets are uniform across the geographical breadth if our country. The environment in which these toilets are placed is not taken into consideration. For example, in a place like Kerala where water is abundant, a water heavy model of toilet can be used. However to employ the same where water scarcity is real would mean that the toilet would soon reach unusable state after their construction. This was one issue that an Analytics done by Audit in Rajasthan had shown.
Defect in Planning: In many cases there is no linkage with planning from lower level and up. Mechanisms to measure the upkeep of the toilets post construction, possibility of slip back in rural areas etc is lacking. Without a mechanism in place, the whole initial effort goes to waste.
Behavioural Changes: Simply building these toilets and maintaining them alone can’t help much unless there can be behavioural Changes in the community. For this IEC ( Information, Education, Communication campaigns need to be conducted. Many behavioural strategies like peer pressure etc. can also help.
There are many good suggestions in the Performance Audit Report of the CAG which goes into the details of many of these issues.1