 Welcome to the course on sustainable and affordable sanitation solutions for small towns. Sanitation is a huge challenge in a country like India. Solutions with a conventional centralized imagination have huge limitations. There are decentralized solutions which can be sustainable and affordable, however they have not received enough attention in policy or in practice. Further there are no town-level interventions to illustrate the possibility and potential of a decentralized system. The major objectives of this course are one to understand the sanitation challenges faced by the country and to explore the alternatives to centralized forms of sanitation planning. The whole course is molded along the understandings and experiences of the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay and the Kerala Institute of Local Administration on such an exploration in a small town of Alapudha in Kerala. So you will be learning the course along with 80 other participants of a winter school that we have conducted. Thus the course has a very practical approach to sanitation planning with understanding the problem followed by steps of intervention. At the end of the course the learning outcomes for the students are one, you must be able to understand the sanitation crisis. Two, you must have a clear understanding of how decentralization can be a favorable and feasible option for small towns. Three, you are equipped with the skills to intervene in your own local sanitation context. Best wishes and welcome once again.