ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the literature on social innovations from the 1990s onwards and applies the conceptual frameworks from this to gain a deeper understanding of the changes being made in the context of Indian urban sanitation. In doing so, it draws extensively on specific examples positioned from all parts of the country where experiments and interventions have been made in urban sanitation and have placed households and communities at the heart of such changes. The concept of social innovation that originated in the 1950s coincided with a phase when state interventions were increasingly linking social problems with technological solutions. The chapter looks at four characteristics of social innovations in the urban sanitation sector in India: hybridity, intersectionality, relationship building and behaviour change. Social innovation in urban sanitation has had important social consequences by ‘organising the unorganised', ‘servicing the voices of the poor' and ‘ensuring a comprehensive dialogue between different stakeholders'.
