Poor sanitation continues to be critical problem in rural India despite the considerable efforts of the Government to improve and expand the access. The rural water supply and sanitation programmes have so far been driven by a lop-sided top-to- bottom approach, entirely managed by the Government or its agencies in the form of purely engineering-based solutions. In this context implementation of bottom-up-approach based on demand driven model is imperative and assumes special significance. Of late, the Government has realized that investments in water and sanitation alone are not enough, as systems are failing to be sustained. While managing these systems, it is necessary that the local community should be involved in planning, technology and system selection, and implementation of the project. In this context, it is worth analysing the status of individual household latrine construction and women sanitary complexes and the factors which affect the beneficiary participation in adoption and usage to probe into the above gaps a study was undertaken in Athur and Thoppampatti Panchayats of Dindigul district of Tamil Nadu with the following objectives

• Identify the drinking water and sanitation issues in the study area including school sanitation.
• To analyse the reasons for the gap between adoption of ihhl and usage.
• To examine the implementation of women sanitary complex in the selected villages.
• To study the role of NGO in promoting peoples’ participation in sanitation sector in the study area,

The study is based on descriptive design employing survey method. Both secondary primary data have been used in the study. Multi-stage random Sampling Technique has been used for selection of district, blocks. Panchayats and households. Athur block and Thoppampatti blocks in Dindigul district constitute the area of the study and the total sample consisted of 316 households in Athur block and 394 in Thoppampatti block. The findings suggest that absence of latrine infrastructure alone is not a primary factor for continued open defecation and that toilet building alone will not address the widespread problem of open defecation in rural India. There are other behavioural aspects which constrain the use of latrines. These behavioural aspects vary with communities, across gender and different age groups and castes. Any future sanitation intervention, along with achieving targets, needs to consider these aspects and approach the issue of sanitation behaviour change holistically. The study makes an attempt to assess the extent of CP and isolate the challenges facing CP in the rural water supply sector and sanitation in the study area, with a view to suggesting the strategies which can enhance CP and improve service delivery responsibilities in the rural water supply and sanitation.