Vatsaltai Nagar, Mumbai

Community Composition: Heterogenous

General Description: Located in Kurla, Mumbai, Vatsaltai is a commercial area (small shops/shoe-sole factories, leatherworks) and residential slum area. It is a midsize settlement

Sanitation Situation: We visited two major streets quite a distance apart from each other. One of them was a pay-and-use toilet in a residential area and was run by a Mahila Mandal (women-run maintenance organization) while the other one was a free BMC toilet in a half commercial/half residential area which was in a very bad condition.

Top Reasons to Choose This Location/Unique Aspects:

1. People were very eager to talk to us about their sanitation concerns.2. This is one of the only toilets we found that was maintained by and an all-women Mandal.3. The toilet caretaker complained that although it was a pay-and-use toilet a lot of the residents wouldn’t buy monthly passes or pay money as they thought the toilet was too dirty/ unkempt to pay for the facility.The caretaker however maintains that since the people don’t pay up front to use the toilet he doesn’t make enough money to keep the place clean. 4. Since the commercial and residential spaces live in co-existence with each other, the toilet in the area gets much more traffic and this poses more challenges to the caretaker/maintenance in-charge.5. Since there is no accountability on the users part, a lot of people steal bulbs, tap fittings, etc. from the toilets.