Chapter 5 Amplifying the community voices for greater access to drinking water in Bangladesh

This chapter reflects on the approach and learning of an innovative project in Bangladesh that addresses drinking water security issues of the poor and marginal communities through participatory research, innovation, and social mobilization. The people, living in the most difficult geophysical areas, are facing severe crisis of drinking water and associated health risks due to remoteness, seasonality, social isolation, and poor institutional links. The geophysical constraints such as growing salinity, arsenic, flood and drought, and drawdown of groundwater tables have aggravated the problems. The existing government services hardly reach to the most unserved and needy people because of remoteness and lack of responsiveness of the government departments. A participatory action research project led to collective understanding about the severity of the problems and associated health risks and vulnerability. This again built greater awareness and motivated the poor, women, and marginal communities to establish links with key actors and take various local and collective actions toward ensuring their greater access to drinking water, sanitation facilities, and health services from the relevant government departments and development agencies.