Agra’s ODF+ Certificate and the Community Toilet Record That Doesn’t Show the Water

On the Agra Municipal Corporation’s own website, a reform report from 2017–18 records a sentence that has since travelled far: “Agra Nagar Nigam Declared as ODF dated 24 July 2018 & ODF ++ dated 22 January 2019.” The same website hosts a table of community toilet locations, construction agencies, maintaining agencies, handover dates, contract periods, and expiry dates. Read together, the two pages describe a city that has certified its sanitation status and a city that has listed its toilet contracts. What neither page shows is the water in the tank, the caretaker on the roster, or the wage paid for the shift.

That gap is not proof of failure. It is a specific, addressable audit problem. The certificate is a claim about a system. The contract list is a claim about paperwork. Neither is a measurement of whether a waste picker, a sanitation worker, or a street vendor can actually use the toilet on a given morning.

What ODF+ is supposed to certify

When the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs launched the revised Swachh Certification Protocols in June 2022, the press release described the ODF+ tier in plain terms: “ODF+ – Focus on functionality of CT/PT and innovative O&M business model for their sustainability in long run.” The same release states that the protocol “contains provisions to encourage cities to have robust infrastructure with reliable Operation & Maintenance (O&M) mechanisms.”

Two words matter here. Functionality is not the same as existence. A community toilet that has been built, handed over, and listed is not automatically functional. O&M business model is not the same as a contract. A contract that names a maintaining agency does not by itself describe how water arrives, who cleans, how often, and at what cost to the user.

The protocol language, in other words, points toward operational evidence. The question for any city is whether the public record contains that evidence, or only the certificate and the contract.

The Agra contract record: dates, agencies, and a long tail of expiries

Agra Municipal Corporation’s community toilet page is a useful document precisely because it is so literal. Its columns are: location, construction agency, maintaining agency, handover date, contract period, expiry date, and the scheme under which the toilet was constructed. The list runs past ninety entries.

Several patterns are visible without inference:

  • Many toilets were handed over in 1998 and 1999 to Sulabh International on 30-year contracts, with expiry dates in 2028 and 2029.
  • Some entries show 30-year contracts handed over in 1984 and expiring on 19/12/2014—for example, Sirki Mandi chipitola, Transport Nagar, S.N. Hospital, Agra College, Devani chauraha, and others.
  • Some entries show 5-year contracts expiring in 2007 and 2008—for example, Charhat Baluganj (Shobhit Social Welfare Society, expiry 20/09/2007) and Soron Katra (expiry 16/1/2008).
  • Several entries show 30-year contracts handed over in 2002 and 2003 with expiry dates in 2032 and 2033.

These dates are facts in the record. What the record does not state is the maintenance status of a toilet after its listed contract expiry. An expired contract is a prompt for a records request, not a conclusion about service quality. The honest reading is: the public list tells us when the paperwork was supposed to end, and it does not tell us what happened next.

The 2021 tender: a five-year model arrives

In September 2021, Agra Municipal Corporation issued an invitation to tender for “Operation and Maintenance (O&M) of Community Toilets for the period of 5 years.” The notice set a non-refundable tender document cost of Rs. 10,000 plus 18% GST and an earnest money deposit of INR 7,00,000. The full RFP, referenced in the notice, would contain the scope of work and service-level standards.

This tender is significant for what it signals: a shift from the long 30-year handover model toward shorter O&M contracts. But the notice alone does not tell us which toilets the contract covered, whether it replaced all prior arrangements, or what service levels were specified. Those questions sit in the RFP, which is the document a serious audit would begin with.

The silence that matters: water, roster, wage, fee

Here is the central observation. The municipal record is strong on dates and agencies. It is silent on the operational inputs that determine whether a toilet is functional:

  • Water sourcing and delivery. Is the toilet connected to a municipal line, a borewell, or a tanker? If a tanker, what is the delivery schedule, and who pays?
  • Caretaker staffing. How many caretakers, on what shifts, employed by whom, at what wage?
  • Cleaning frequency. What is the specified standard, and what is recorded?
  • User fees. What is charged, to whom, and how is revenue accounted?

None of these appear in the community toilet table. None appear in the 2021 tender notice. They may exist in the RFP, in contractor returns, in municipal water bills, or in welfare board registers. But they are not in the public record that a citizen, a researcher, or a worker can read today.

This silence is the audit gap. It is not evidence that the water never arrives or that the caretaker is unpaid. It is evidence that the certificate’s functionality claim cannot be checked against the public record as it stands.

A worked example, clearly hypothetical

Suppose a named community toilet has a caretaker roster showing two shifts, and a water delivery log showing one tanker per day. If the tanker covers one shift’s use and the roster assumes two, the certificate’s functionality claim and the roster describe different toilets. The audit’s job is not to assume which record is wrong. It is to make the difference visible, at a named site, with named documents, so that the correction can be specific.

This is why the unit of analysis matters. “Agra is ODF++” is a city-level claim. “This toilet, on this date, had this much water and this staffing” is a ground truth. The gap between the two is where environmental and occupational health equity actually lives.

What a participatory audit would need to measure

The proposal here is procedural, not a finding. It is a way to pair each certificate claim with a measured condition at a named toilet, collected by the workers and users who depend on it.

  1. Name the toilet and the contract. For each site, record the location as listed, the maintaining agency, the handover date, and the contract expiry date from the municipal table.
  2. Request the operational documents. Under the Right to Information Act, ask for the water supply arrangement (connection, borewell, or tanker log), the caretaker roster and wage records, the cleaning schedule, and the user-fee collection record for that site.
  3. Measure the ground truth. A simple, repeatable observation: water available at the tap at a stated time, number of functional cubicles, cleaning observed or recorded, and a short user report from workers who use the toilet during their shift.
  4. Publish the pair. The certificate claim, the contract record, and the measured condition should sit side by side, with the date of measurement and the source of each number.

This protocol does not require new technology. It requires that the operational inputs already known to the contractor and the municipal office be made public at the same granularity as the certificate.

Why this matters for informal workers specifically

Waste pickers, sanitation workers, construction workers, street vendors, platform gig workers, and fisherfolk do not experience sanitation as a city-level statistic. They experience it as a toilet that is open, has water, and is safe to enter during a shift. A certificate that is not paired with a measured condition at a named site leaves the worker with no way to hold the system accountable for the thing that affects their health that day.

The occupational health stakes are concrete. A sanitation worker who cannot wash after handling waste, or a street vendor who has no functional toilet within walking distance, bears a cost that does not appear in the certificate. The audit gap is not an abstraction; it is the distance between a declaration and a shift.

What the certificate can and cannot tell us

The ODF+ declaration is a real administrative act, recorded on the municipal website. It tells us that a process was completed and a status was claimed. It does not tell us, by itself, whether a specific toilet on a specific morning had water, a caretaker, and a clean cubicle.

The contract list is a real administrative record. It tells us who was supposed to maintain which toilet and until when. It does not tell us what happened after the expiry date, or how the 2021 five-year O&M tender changed the picture on the ground.

Reading the two together is the beginning of an honest audit. The next step is not a conclusion about Agra’s sanitation. It is a set of records requests, at named toilets, for the water, the roster, and the wage—the operational facts that the certificate assumes and the public record does not yet show.

Frequently asked questions

Is Agra’s ODF++ declaration invalid?

Nothing in the retrieved municipal record suggests the declaration was invalid. The AMRUT reform report simply records the dates: ODF on 24 July 2018 and ODF++ on 22 January 2019. The question this article raises is narrower: whether the public record contains the operational evidence needed to check the functionality claim at named toilets.

Do expired contracts in the community toilet list mean those toilets were unmaintained?

No. The list records contract expiry dates, not post-expiry service status. An expired contract is a legitimate reason to file a records request about what arrangement replaced it, but it is not evidence of failure.

What documents would a citizen ask for first?

The full RFP referenced in the September 2021 O&M tender, the water supply arrangement for a named toilet, the caretaker roster and wage records, the cleaning schedule, and the user-fee collection record. These are the operational inputs that the certificate’s functionality claim depends on.

Does the 2021 tender cover all community toilets in Agra?

The tender notice does not say. It invites bids for O&M of community toilets for five years, but the scope of work and the list of covered sites would be in the RFP. The notice alone cannot answer this question.

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