Reckitt, the British consumer goods company, is pressing forward with a nationwide campaign to build a formal sanitation economy in India by converting informal waste handlers into skilled micro-entrepreneurs, overhauling school sanitation infrastructure, and commissioning the country’s first scientific study of life expectancy among sanitation workers — a group whose average lifespan trails the national mean by nearly 30 years.

WORKFORCE TRANSFORMATION

The company’s Harpic World Toilet College (HWTC), operated in partnership with the World Toilet Organisation and Jagran Pehel, has trained more than 1.25 lakh sanitation workers since its launch, with women accounting for over 45 percent of all trainees. Graduates are equipped to operate mechanised cleaning units, manage school sanitation services, maintain urban drains, and run facility-care operations as independent contractors.

An independent social return on investment assessment found that every rupee invested in the programme generates Rs 23.20 in social value — driven by gains in worker dignity, safer conditions, and improved financial and health resilience for workers and their families.

“India has made extraordinary progress in building toilets, but true sanitation progress must also mean longer and safer lives for the people who maintain them.” said Gaurav Jain, Executive Vice President, South Asia, Reckitt

POWER OF 8: SCHOOL SANITATION REFORM

Reckitt’s Harpic Safe Sanitation Programme deploys what it calls the “Power of 8” model — an eight-element operational framework designed to guarantee hygiene quality and financial accountability across school sanitation systems.

The framework bundles assured funding, scheduled cleaning cycles, trained HWTC manpower, professional equipment, supervisory oversight, consumable supplies, drain maintenance and de-clogging, and live digital tracking into a single auditable service package.

The model is intended to turn sanitation delivery into an enterprise-driven ecosystem, giving HWTC graduates a structured route to operate as service providers and contractors at scale. Behavioural change components — muppet-led sessions, storybooks, pop-up installations, and wall art co-created with Sesame Workshop India — are embedded in the curriculum to establish hygiene habits among schoolchildren.

LIFE-EXPECTANCY EVIDENCE GAP

Despite the scale of India’s sanitation workforce, no nationally representative, occupation-linked mortality dataset exists for the sector. Reckitt says the absence of such data leaves policymakers without the evidence needed to design effective mechanisation mandates, personal protective equipment requirements, or compensation frameworks.

The company is funding what it describes as India’s first comprehensive life-expectancy assessment for sanitation workers, aiming to quantify survival risks from toxic gas exposure, infections, musculoskeletal injury, and socio-economic disadvantage. It says the findings are intended to feed directly into national sanitation economy planning.

Reckitt has also sought to raise public recognition of sanitation workers. To mark the 25th anniversary of World Toilet Day, the company facilitated the release of commemorative postage stamps honouring the workforce.

EXPANSION TARGETS

Reckitt says it plans to extend the Power of 8 framework across additional Indian states, deepen enterprise development through HWTC, and ultimately reach 70 percent of India’s sanitation worker cohort. It describes the combined push — entrepreneurship training, systemic school reform, national recognition and life-expectancy research — as a unified strategy to create a sanitation economy “where every worker can live a longer, healthier and dignified life.”

India’s Swachh Bharat Mission has overseen the construction of more than 100 million toilets since 2014, a transformation widely credited with expanding sanitation access. However, critics and public-health researchers have long argued that the programme’s focus on infrastructure has not been matched by investment in the workforce that maintains it.