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Context
- The article talks about the scope and importance of the Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM)
What is the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan?
- Swachh Bharat Abhiyan aims to clean up the streets, roads and infrastructure of India’s cities, smaller towns, and rural areas
- The objectives of Swachh Bharat include eliminating open defecation through the construction of household-owned and community-owned toilets and establishing an accountable mechanism of monitoring toilet use
Has the programme been successful?
- The government are from its own administrative data and the Swachh Survekshan Gramin conducted by the Quality Council of India (QCI), a body set up jointly by the Government of India and industry.
Quality Council of India and SBM’s statistics
- Swachh Survekshan claimed 62.45% India-wide latrine coverage, which was similar to the SBM’s figure of 63.73
- The QCI survey also claimed that 91.29% of those with access to a toilet use it.
What is the present scenario?
- The pressure of an approaching deadline of making India open defecation free (ODF) is one.
- In a report called “Quality and Sustainability of Toilets” (WaterAid, 2017), the authors report that in the eight States less than a quarter of households said that it was their own initiative to build the toilet.
- This is contrary to the government’s claim that SBM is a people’s movement.
- “Swachh Bharat Mission (Gramin) Immersive Research aimed to explore behavioural change best practices in rural districts that have been declared ODF in Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh.
What is the way ahead?
- Unfortunately, there is no credible, representative country-wide estimates of latrine use in India.
- Government data and the Swachh Survekshan show the programme to be achieving what it is meant to achieve.
- The programme seems to be running on a check mark-based approach, and between all this, widespread open defecation in India continues to kill babies, and stunts those who survive.
