The case study titled “Rural Sanitary Marts: Developing a sustainable alternate delivery mechanism for sanitation in West Bengal” has been written Alok Kumar and Sumita Ganguly in India Infrastructure Report, published in 2007 by United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF). It presents that the Rural Sanitary Mart (RSM) typically rural production centres and retail outlets that manufacture and market low-cost hardware and provide services was rapidly expanded and becomes sustainable over a period of time in West Bengal.

It looks at that the concept of production centres and RSMs was first tried out in an Intensive Sanitation Project in West Bengal’s Midnapur district in the 1990s with the assistance of a local NGO, Ram Krishna Mission Lok Shiksha Parishad (RKMLSP), and UNICEF. Further describe that after the Intensive Sanitation Project was introduced, coverage of households by sanitary latrines jumped from 5 percent to 60 percent between 1991 and 2001. At present it has reached almost 100% coverage in both the districts. The model was rapidly expanded and currently there are 333 functioning RSMs in 18 districts of West Bengal catering to the growing demand for rural sanitation. A large number of women masons have been engaged by the RSMs in West Bengal. Consequently, RSMs in West Bengal have been able to generate demand for 5 million household toilets and have met the demand by production and supply of hardware.

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