Tracking water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) indicators in tribal districts of India: a secondary data analysis through 2015–2020

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Under Sustainable Development Goal targets 6.1 and 6.2, every nation is committed to ensure universal and equitable access to water and sanitation to its people and India is no exception. The country has made a considerable progress toward these targets through various policy and programmatic initiatives since 2015. Within an overall improvement at the country level, this paper examines the coverage of key WASH indicators in tribal population of the country. Secondary data pertaining to the WASH indicators were obtained from the NFHS 2015–2016 and NFHS 2019–2021 for 90 tribal-dominated districts of the country and were analyzed. We ranked these tribal districts on the basis of their performance. The analysis showed a distinct improvement in terms of marked fall in open defecation, uptake of improved toilet facilities, accessibility to improved sources of water, and improved behaviors in relation to the handwashing and treatment of drinking water in tribal population with varying levels of coverage, which was captured in WASH ranking of these districts. The districts falling toward the bottom side of the ranking ladder need prioritization and entail more attention of programmatic interventions in order to sustain the overall progress and to reach the SDG targets of 100% WASH coverage.