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Source: The post is based on the article “Toilet use declining in rural India since 2018-19: WB paper” published in “The Hindu” on 4th October 2023
What is the News?
Researchers at the World Bank and a faculty member of economics at Yale University have released a working paper on the progress of the Swacch Bharat Mission-Gramin(SBM-G).
What is Swacch Bharat Mission-Gramin(SBM-G)?
What are the key findings of the World Bank paper on progress made in Swachh Bharat Mission-Gramin(SBM-G)?
Swacch Bharat Mission-Gramin(SBM-G) has led to a substantial increase in access to own or shared improved toilets in rural India – from 38% in 2012 to 90% in 2019-20.
Most low-income States were among the best performers in terms of their overall increase in regular use of toilets and the performance of richer States was mixed.
A large increase in toilet use was seen in the poorest 20% of the rural population, which reported toilet use going up from 7% to 43% in between 2015-16 and 2019-21.
However, since 2018-19, there has been a clear trend of regular toilet use declining in rural India.
The decline in toilet usage was the largest among the SCs and the STs.For instance, there was a 20 percentage point decline in regular use of toilets for the SCs and a 24 percentage point decline for the STs compared to a decline of 9 and 5 percentage points for the Other Backward Caste and General categories.
The states where there has been a sustained decline in regular use of toilets since 2018 were Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, Chhattisgarh, Telangana, Karnataka, and Himachal Pradesh.
On the other hand, states like Odisha, Punjab, Kerala, Bihar, Uttarakhand, Haryana, and Assam were found to be steady performers in terms of continued toilet usage.
