**4. Conclusion**

Non-networked sanitation is a viable and necessary alternative to sewerage systems for public health and environmental management in the Global South. However, an erstwhile exclusive focus on developing sewerage infrastructure and viewing non-networked sanitation as a stopgap arrangement has led to poor institutional engagement with the state of the latter. On-site systems have proliferated under a laissez-faire regime, with households determining conventional design practices as a function of cost and convenience. These deviations from the scientific design have come at the expense of increased epidemiological risks and water pollution. In the run-up to the end of the SDG era, the agenda for citywide sanitation cannot exclude improving the quality of on-site systems and their performance. High-settlement densities necessitate a shift to advanced packaged-type systems for urban and peri-urban areas coupled with prefabrication to drive the change at scale and speed. Moreover, since operational performance is a function of both the design of the system and its maintenance, a regulatory programme and strengthening local governance capacities to deliver it are critical to long-term success.

*Managing Non-Sewered Sanitation for Achieving Sustainable Development Goal 6 in India DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.98597*
