Kamal Kar

The pioneer of Community-led Total Sanitation

Dr. Kamal Kar is a specialist in livestock production, agriculture and natural resources by training, with special interest in Social and Participatory Development. He has worked as an independent consultant in South and South East Asia, Africa and Latin America for bilateral, multilateral and international agencies, including the World Bank, WSP, the Asian Development Bank, DFID, UNICEF, UNDP, Ireland Aid, GTZ, and a number of International NGOs, including CARE, Plan International and WaterAid. He has also been working with IDS as a consultant on the project Going to Scale? The Potential of Community-led Total Sanitation and, together with Robert Chambers and Petra Bongartz is working on an IrishAid funded action learning and networking project Sharing Lessons, Improving Practice: Maximising the potential of Community-Led Total Sanitation (CLTS)

Dr Kar has pioneered a number of innovative approaches in natural resources management and low cost appropriate technologies in farming. He has also been a leading figure in the field of collective management of pasture and natural resources (Nukhurluls) in the Gobi region in Mongolia. Other areas of work include urban poverty, slum improvement, and local governance in India, Mongolia, Bangladesh and
Cambodia. He is also a founder member of the International Federation for Women in Agriculture (New Delhi).

Kamal Kar pioneered Community-led Total Sanitation (CLTS) together with VERC (Village Education Resource Centre), a partner of WaterAid Bangladesh, in 2000 in Mosmoil, a village in the Rajshahi district of Bangladesh whilst evaluating a traditionally subsidised sanitation programme. Kar, who had years of experience in participatory approaches in a range of development projects, succeeded in persuading the local NGO to stop top-down toilet construction through subsidy. He advocated change in institutional attitude and the need to draw on intense local mobilisation and facilitation to enable villagers to analysis their sanitation and waste situation and bring about collective decision making to stop open defecation. The results were remarkable and the rest, as they say, is history

Selected Publications:

Kar, Kamal with Chambers, Robert (2008) Handbook on Community-Led Total Sanitation . London: Plan International (UK).

Kar, Kamal and Bongartz, Petra (2006) Latest Update to Subsidy or Self Respect (Update to IDS Working Paper 257) Brighton: IDS.

Kar, Kamal (2005) Practical Guide to Triggering Community-Led Total Sanitation (CLTS). Brighton: IDS.

Kar, Kamal and Pasteur, Katherine (2005) Subsidy or self-respect? Community-led total sanitation. An update on recent developments. IDS Working Paper 257. Brighton: IDS.

Kar, Kamal (2003) Subsidy or Self-Respect? Participatory Total Community Sanitation in Bangladesh IDS Working Paper 184. Brighton: IDS.