People will learn from examples, says RICE's Nikhil Srivastav

About 56 per cent of people surveyed in rural MP, Rajasthan, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh by research advocacy group Research Institute For Compassionate Economics (RICE) reported being aware of at least one of the three coercive practices — being stopped from open defecation, threats of withholding government benefits and threats of fines — deployed by the government staff or members of community vigilance groups, if they failed to build latrines or continued with open defecation. Nikhil Srivastav, director of research and sanitation at RICE, a graduate student of the Lyndon B Johnson School of Public Affairs, University of Texas, and one of the co-authors of the paper explains to Swagata Yadavar.