Swach Bharat Abhiyaan :- An Analysis

Introduction :- 

“A clean India would be the best tribute India could pay to Mahatma Gandhi on his 150 birth anniversary in 2019,” said Shri Narendra Modi as he launched the Swachh Bharat Mission at Rajpath in New Delhi. On 2nd October 2014, Swachh Bharat Mission was launched throughout length and breadth of the country as a national movement.

While leading the mass movement for cleanliness, the Prime Minister exhorted people to fulfil Mahatma Gandhi’s dream of a clean and hygienic India. Shri Narendra Modi himself initiated the cleanliness drive at Mandir Marg Police Station. Picking up the broom to clean the dirt, making Swachh Bharat Abhiyan a mass movement across the nation, the Prime Minister said people should neither litter, nor let others litter. He gave the mantra of ‘Na gandagi karenge, Na karne denge.’ Shri Narendra Modi also invited nine people to join the cleanliness drive and requested each of them to draw nine more into the initiative.

By inviting people to participate in the drive, the Swachhta Abhiyan has turned into a National Movement. A sense of responsibility has been evoked among the people through the Clean India Movement. With citizens now becoming active participants in cleanliness activities across the nation, the dream of a ‘Clean India’ once seen by Mahatma Gandhi has begun to get a shape.

The Prime Minister has helped spread the message of Swachh Bharat by urging people through his words & action. He carried out a cleanliness drive in Varanasi as well. He wielded a spade near River Ganga at Assi Ghat in Varanasi under the Clean India Mission. He was joined by a large group of local people who cooperated in the Swachhta Abhiyan. Understanding the significance of sanitation, Prime Minister, Shri Narendra Modi has simultaneously addressed the health problems that Indians families have to deal with due to lack of proper toilets in their homes.

Components of the Swach Bharat Abhiyaan :- 

• Swach Bharat Abhiyan Gramin :- Swachh Bharat Mission Gramin SBM (G) endeavours to accelerate rural sanitation coverage, reduce open defecation and improve management of solid and liquid wastes. It focuses on ensuring usage of toilets along with their construction. There is a strong emphasis on behaviour change, including a focus on interpersonal communication; strengthening implementation and delivery mechanisms down to the village level; and giving states flexibility to design delivery mechanisms that take into account local cultures, practices, sensibilities and demands. The focus of the Strategy is to move towards a ‘Swachh Bharat’ by providing flexibility to State Governments, as Sanitation is a state subject, to decide on their implementation policy and mechanisms, taking into account State specific requirements. This is focused to enable States to develop an Implementation Framework that can utilise the provisions under the Mission effectively and maximize the impact of the interventions. The Government of India’s role would be to complement the efforts of the State Governments through the focused programme being given the status of a Mission, recognizing its dire need for the country. The suggested approach would be to adopt the Community led and Community Saturation approaches focusing heavily on collective behavioral change. Emphasis is to be placed on awareness generation, triggering behaviour change and demand generation for sanitary facilities in Houses, Schools, Anganwadis, places of Community congregation, and for Solid and Liquid Waste Management activities. Focus will be on Inter Personal Communication (IPC), especially of triggering of demand and use of toilets through social and behavioural change communication and house to house interventions.
• Swach Bharat Abhiyan Urban :- SBM (Urban) aims to ensure that a) No households engage in the practice of open defecation: b) No new insanitary toilets are constructed during the mission period, and c) Pit latrines are converted to sanitary latrines. The Target Group for construction of household units of Toilets, thus, is: (i) 80% of urban households engaging in open defecation (ii) All households with insanitary latrines (iii) All households with single-pit latrines These will be targeted under this component for the construction of household toilets or individual household latrines during the mission period. The remaining 20% of households practicing open defecation are assumed to be catered by community toilets due to constraints of space.

Funding:- 

Budgetary allocations :- Funding and technical support from theWorld Bank, corporations as part of corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives, and by state governments under the ‘Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan’ and ‘Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan’ .Swachh Bharat Kosh(SBK): Swachh Bharat cess is an improvement in the service tax by 0.5% on all the services in India.  The funding for 9 crore toilets is expected to come from 3 primary sources – Ministry of Drinking Water & Sanitation, Ministry of Rural Development, and the States in the ratio of 75:25 between centre and State and 90:10 for North Eastern state.

Challenges :- 

• Mindset of People: About 590 Million persons in rural areas defecate in the open. The Mindset of a major portion of the population habituated to open defecation needs to be changed. Many of them already have a toilet but prefer to defecate in the open.
• Scientific Solid & Liquid Waste Management sanitation practices: There is no professional expertise in the Municipal Corporation to keep the city clean and it remains unclear how and where the waste will be disposed and what extent of the responsibility for managing waste lies with citizens.
• Sustainibilty: The lack of any resources for maintenance of school toilets and community sanitary complexes could result in rapid deterioration and subsequent non-usage of these over time, severely impacting the sustainability of the programme.
• Lack of staff: Inadequate dedicated staff at the Field Level for implementation of rural sanitation.

NSSO Survey on Sanitation :- 

To evaluate the implementation and progress of the Swachh Bharat Mission at central and state level, a survey was conducted by the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) during May-Jun 2015. Based on findings from the survey, states have been ranked in this report to capture their performance on access and usage of sanitary toilets in India. It is hoped that the ranking will sensitize the states on their performance and instill a sense of positive competition among them. A survey on swachhta status was conducted by NSSO May-Jun 2015 covering 73, 176 households in 3788 villages across India.

Conclusion :- 

Since Open Defecation Free villages and cities cannot be achieved without all the households and individuals conforming to the desired behaviour of toilet use, every day and every time, community action and generation of peer pressure on the outliers are the key. Therefore behavior change communication should focus on triggering entire communities. Community based monitoring and vigilance committees are essential to create peer pressure. Delivery mechanisms would be adopted to meet the community needs, which is to be decided by the States.

Availability of water is an important factor for sustaining sanitation facilities created. Conjoint programmes may be proritised at the District and GP levels under the SBM (Gramin) and the National Rural Drinking Water Programme (NRDWP), to maximize the availability of water for sanitary purposes.

‘Swachh Bharat Abhiyaan’ is not just about cleaning surroundings but also seeking the participation of people in creating trash-free environment, providing sanitation facilities and paving a way for Swatchh Bharat eventually. This campaign will not only help citizens adopt good habits of cleanliness but also boost our image as a nation, sincerely working towards cleanliness.

By: Shashank Shekhar