Sanitation is the creation of a clean and hygienic environment and making it sustainable. This paper looks at the facts of sanitation in the economy. The stress is upon economic cost, benefits and other tools of evaluation of sanitation progress. For a huge country like India, with different social and economic contexts, any research on sanitation subject should try to take more than a snapshot of the rural sanitation reality of India. Sanitation behaviour change should not be reduced to selling toilets to people. India faces the challenge of having the most number of people in the world defecating in the open and also has a burgeoning crisis of untreated faecal waste that is contaminating surfaces and ground water creating an imminent health crisis. We must break the myths and monotony branding rural people as ignorant and dirty. Research implications and recommendations and messages in sanitation should begin by honouring and respecting the hard physical labour and their dirty hands and feet.
