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The world's remaining open defecation is increasingly concentrated in rural India. The Indian Government's efforts to reduce open defecation by providing subsidies for latrine construction have been largely unsuccessful in addressing the problem. It is now clear that behaviour change must be the priority if progress on ending open defecation is to be made. While community-led strategies have proven effective in various developing country contexts, there are serious reasons to question whether similar methods can work in rural India. Through both quantitative and qualitative analyses, we find that strict social hierarchies that continue to govern daily interactions in rural life today obstruct the spirit of cooperation upon which such methods rely. Additionally, caste-based notions of purity and pollution make the simple latrines used all over the developing world unattractive to rural Indians. In a context where people …