The Politics of Visibility in Urban Sanitation: Bureaucratic Coordination and the Swachh Bharat Mission in Tamil Nadu, India By Prassanna Raman S.M. in Architecture Studies, MIT (2012) B.A. in Economics and Art History, Williams College (2008) Submitted to the Department of Urban Studies and Planning in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in International Development at the MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY May 2020 © 2020 Prassanna Raman. All Rights Reserved The author hereby grants to MIT the permission to reproduce and to distribute publicly paper and electronic copies of the thesis document in whole or in part in any medium now known or hereafter created. Author_______________________________________________________ Department of Urban Studies and Planning (February 14, 2020) Certified by____________________________________________________ Gabriella Y. Carolini Associate Professor of International Development and Urban Planning Department of Urban Studies and Planning Dissertation Supervisor Accepted by____________________________________________________ Jinhua Zhao Associate Professor of Transportation and City Planning Chair, PhD Committee Department of Urban Studies and Planning The Politics of Visibility in Urban Sanitation: Bureaucratic Coordination and the Swachh Bharat Mission in Tamil Nadu, India by Prassanna Raman Submitted to the Department of Urban Studies and Planning on February 14, 2020 in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in International Development ABSTRACT Often linked with class and caste and mired in socio-cultural taboos, sanitation has a reputation problem in India. The introduction of the Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM) aims to address these challenges not only at the individual level, but also at the organizational level. SBM heavily banks on the use of reputational devices such as social media campaigns and city rankings to incentivize the sub-national implementation of reforms. While literatures on sanitation implementation highlight coordination between agencies and between agencies and NGOs as key to service improvements, few if any, explore how organizational reputation may affect that coordination. Given the importance afforded to SBM within India’s current march toward sanitation reform, this scholarly lacuna is surprising. My dissertation aims to address this knowledge gap through an in-depth study of coordination, and the role of organizational reputation in the roll-out of SBM in the South Indian state of Tamil Nadu. First, I ask what impacts public sector coordination in urban sanitation under SBM. Second, I examine whether SBM’s reputational devices have any effects on coordination. Within Tamil Nadu, I focus on two major streams of work within the SBM Urban portfolio—toilet construction and solid waste management—in the cities of Chennai, Coimbatore, and Trichy. To conduct my study, I use semi-structured interviews with bureaucrats and NGOs, document and social media analysis of SBM materials, and participant observation of behavioral change campaigns run by public agencies and sanitation-centric NGO partners. I found that SBM’s reputational devices were no match for entrenched institutional weaknesses, like poor bureaucratic capacity and administrative incoherence, to incentivize coordination either between agencies or between agencies and NGOs across the three cities. Instead, SBM’s emphasis on social media, city rankings, and certifications has exacerbated the burden of documentation and the “tick-box” culture within agencies. However, I also found that in some cases, SBM’s reputational devices have empowered existing sanitation NGOs by increasing demand for their services. I conclude that SBM’s emphasis on visibility rather than deep institutional reform obfuscates the kind of work needed to improve outcomes in the urban sanitation sector. Thesis Supervisor: Gabriella Y. Carolini Title: Associate Professor of International Development and Urban Planning 2 Acknowledgements It takes a village to finish a PhD, and I have been incredibly fortunate to have had so much guidance and love from my international tribe. At MIT, I am grateful for the support and guidance from my stellar dissertation committee. I would like to thank Gabriella Carolini for being an exceptional mentor and a creative and inter-disciplinary scholar. Thank you for always pushing me to do and be better. I do appreciate it, even if my face sometimes says otherwise. I am grateful for Balakrishnan Rajagopal’s expansive knowledge of South Asian history and his incisive views on international development, particularly in South India. Thank you for challenging me to analyze a problem from different angles. I would also like to thank Jim Wescoat for his emphasis on intellectual and methodological rigor. Thank you for continuing the sanitation journey with me from my Master’s thesis. I promise to at least try to make fewer toilet-related puns moving forward. In addition to my dissertation committee, I have had several wonderful teachers around the world from Cedar Girls’ Secondary School in Singapore to La Jolla Country Day School, Williams College, and MIT in the United States: Ooi Kok Leng, Vimala Kumar, Esther Chiam, Doc Stevenson, Marsha Boston, Alice Thornton-Schilling, Tom Perrotti, Billy Simms, Sarah Bakhiet, Lucie Schmidt, Jon Bakija, Elizabeth McGowan, Guy Hedreen, Jon Mee, Tiku Majumder, Peter Low, Anand Swamy, David Tucker-Smith, Holly Edwards, Michael Lewis, Rick Spalding, Diane Davis, and Graham Jones. My teachers have inspired and encouraged me with their intellectual curiosity and commitment to holistic learning. Special thanks to Sandy Wellford, Ellen Rushman, Eran Ben-Joseph, Sylvia Hiestand, Melanie Mala Ghosh, and Madeline Smith for their wisdom and support in helping me navigate the labyrinthine logistics of the PhD process. It was my privilege to learn with and from the PhD students I met at DUSP, who have been an incredible source of friendship and community. I am so excited to share in your post-PhD adventures and accomplishments. Profound thanks to: Elise Harrington for being my virtual fieldwork muse and Instagram victim; Yasmin Zaerpoor for mocking me for my youthful proclivities; Jeff Rosenblum for all the hugs, coffees, and dinners; Hannah Teicher for her special brand of “prickly” friendship and Sham’s dinners; Jason Spicer for being the Blanche to my Sophia; Aria Finkelstein for her sophisticated views on reality TV; Laura Delgado for being a fellow Eph and Trader Joe’s aficionado; Isadora Cruxen for introducing me to brigadeiros and caipirinhas; Asmaa Elgamal for the BollyX classes and performance power poses; Chaewon Ahn for the “indoor hikes;” Shenhao Wang for the late night chats; Cressica Brazier for her dedication to climate change research and activism; and Minjee Kim for being a kickass co-instructor. My dissertation fieldwork in Tamil Nadu has been one of the most valuable learning experiences in my life, both personally and professionally. It was generously supported by MIT-India, the Center for International Studies, and the Lloyd and Nadine Rodwin International Travel Fellowship from DUSP. I would like to thank Resilient Chennai for the opportunity to collaborate with them on their resilience strategy during my fieldwork. I am particularly grateful for the mentorship and kindness of the Chief Resilience Officer, Krishna Mohan Ramachandran. Besides my affiliation with Resilient Chennai, the richness of my fieldwork experience is a result of the generosity and warmth of my 3 numerous gatekeepers and interview participants, many of whom took a personal interest in my work and encouraged me to challenge existing conceptualizations of sanitation, policy implementation, and bureaucracies in Western ways of looking at the world. Thank you for being so patient with all of my questions as I attempted to reconcile theoretical frameworks and empirical data. I am incredibly humbled and inspired by your dedication to your work, despite the layers of complexities inherent in navigating the politics of implementation and socio-environmental justice in India. I could not have started or finished the PhD without the love and support of my friends, who have provided me with much-needed perspective, comfort, and comic relief when I was feeling overwhelmed by the banality of academic formalities and personalities.1 Heartfelt thanks to: Rachel Fevrier for being the Charles to my Jake; Carynne McIver Button for being “my person;” Sara Siegmann for being my favorite Hoebag, Anna Rutkovskaya for being the best Babushka; Uzaib Saya for being the Stevie to my Moira; Betsy Todd for recommending the most bizarre TV shows for my entertainment; Selmah Goldberg for our regular lunch dates that kept me sane; Yock Theng Tan for always holding space for me; Jane Lim for all the productive café work dates; Sadiqa Mahmood for living with my dissertation-related spaciness and experimental stress baking; Natasha Ali for introducing me to the wonders of Westside, Big Basket, and Sea Rock; Gayatri Ramdas for her eviscerating meme skills and our epic shopping dates; Sarvesh Ashok for constantly rolling his eyes at my bluntness and for indulging my ardent love for Vijay Sethupathi; and Arjun Bhargava for his affection and all the bickering. I am also grateful to my family who have embraced my graduate school adventures with equal parts love, encouragement, and skepticism. Many thanks to my family in and from India for making data