Prime Minister Mr. Narendra Modi is the man who led the nation-wide cleanliness campaign named as Swachh Bharat Abhiyan. It can be translated into English as Clean India Mission. Swachh Bharat Abhiyan is a restructured version of Total Sanitation Campaign (TSC) implemented in 1999 by the then government, which was later renamed as Nirmal Bharat Abhiyan (NBA) in 2012. This drive was formulated to cover all the cities and towns of India to make them clean. It was launched on October 2, 2014 in order to coincide with the vision of a Clean India of Father of the Nation, Mahatma Gandhi. The first cleanliness drive of this mission was started on September 25, 2014 before its formal launch.
Clean India was a dream of Mahatma Gandhi regarding which he once said, “Sanitation is more important than Independence”. During his time, he was very well aware of the poor and dirty condition of the country. The concept of Swachh Bharat is to provide sanitation facilities, including toilets, solid and liquid waste disposal systems, village cleanliness, and safe and adequate drinking water supply in all rural and urban cities of India. This was envisaged to be achieved by 2019 as a befitting tribute to Mahatma Gandhi on his 150th birth anniversary. It served as a great initiative in making people aware of the importance of cleanliness. Since then a lot has changed. The Swachh Bharat Abhiyan has achieved significant milestones on both the rural and urban fronts and has triggered a nationwide flurry of activities to improve sanitation and cleanliness in the country. The government has repeatedly described it as one of the most significant and popular missions embarked upon in India. It urges the people to spend at least 100 hours in a year towards cleanliness in their surrounding areas or other places of India to make it a successful campaign. It is essential for everyone to learn about cleanliness, hygiene, sanitation and the various diseases that are caused due to poor hygiene. If we inculcate certain habits from a young age, like washing hands before meals, regular brushing of teeth and bathing every day, it will go a long way. The habits developed at a young age get embedded into one’s personality.
The urban section of Swachh Bharat Abhiyan operates under the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs. It aims to cover almost 1.04 crore households in order to provide them 2.6 lakh public toilets, 2.5 lakh community toilets together with managing the solid waste in more than 4,000 towns. Community toilets have been planned to be built in the residential areas where availability of individual household toilets is scarce. Public toilets are to be built at designated locations including bus stations, tourist places, railway stations, markets, etc. The Programmes, which have been targeted, are complete removal of open defecation, converting non-flush toilets into flush toilets, eradicating manual scavenging, bringing behavioural changes in public for solid waste management.
The rural section of Swachh Bharat Abhiyan is the mission for implementing cleanliness programmes in rural areas. It operates under the Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation. This campaign is aimed at making rural areas free from open defecation by constructing more than 11 crore toilets throughout the country. As of now, it has achieved its numbers but there are still houses that have been left behind. These will be fixed under the ODF plus mission.
As Union Jal Shakti Minister Mr. Gajendra Singh Shekhawat said, “Department of Drinking Water and Sanitation (DDWS) has launched a 10-year national rural sanitation strategy to make India 100% Open Defecation Free (ODF) place.” This framework also talks about state-specific strategies on menstrual hygiene management, including menstrual waste disposal management, which may be supported under the ODF plus strategy. It includes retrofitting of the toilets and making provision to empty pits every five years, repairing of defunct ones, and construction of soak pits for septic tanks wherever it is required. A district-level training management unit will be set up to provide support to Gram Panchayats so that they ensure operation and maintenance of sanitation infrastructure. The GPs are also supposed to conduct rapid assessment of gaps in water supply and sanitation. There is a big plan of converting waste into bio-fertilizer and other useful energy forms. This mission involves the participation of Gram Panchayats, Panchayat Samitis and Zila Parishads.
The Swachh Bharat Swachh Vidyalaya campaign is run by the Union Ministry of Human Resource Development with the objective of maintaining cleanliness in schools. Many awareness generation programmes on cleanliness have been conducted, such as speeches over the contribution of great people, essay writing competitions, debates, arts & painting, film shows, role plays related to cleanliness and hygiene. It was also planned to hold a half an hour campaign in schools twice a week involving cleanliness activities by teachers, students, parents and community members.
This Clean India Campaign has motivated many people to make their surroundings clean by initiating cleanliness campaigns within their apartments/communities. One such initiative is Swachha Graha Compost Connect (SGCC) by a Bengaluru woman named Savitha Hiremath, who experimented with different composting mechanisms by collecting and processing household waste from her apartment complex. Composting is a cleaner option than leaving the mixed waste in a bin. Under this initiative, the apartments which process waste into compost are connected to rural farmers located on the outskirts of the city. So that they buy and use the compost for organic farming.
The Government of India has come up with some digital initiatives like Swachh Nagar mobile app through which people will be able to get their household waste picked up by urban municipal bodies. They can also track the waste-collection cart on the app. They have to pay to the civic bodies to avail the service through this app. Another such initiative is “Google Toilet Locator”. Up to now, around 40,000 public toilet blocks across 1400 cities have been mapped and can be seen on Google maps. The Google toilet locator also provides an option for citizens to provide their feedback after using these toilets.
Swachh Sarvekshan is an annual survey of cleanliness, hygiene and sanitation in cities and towns across India. It was launched as a part of the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan. The Ministry of Home and Urban Affairs (MoHUA) conducted its first survey of ‘Swachh Sarvekshan’ for ranking 73 cities (Urban Local Bodies) in January 2016. In order to expand the coverage of cities, the Ministry continued to conduct its surveys every year to rank cities and award them in various categories. In 2019, it scaled even greater heights by covering 4,237 cities in a completely digital format. In 2020, it will make the assessment on a quarterly basis under two categories—cities with a population of one lakh and above and those of less than one lakh. The Finance Ministry started collecting some funds known as Swachh Bharat cess (0.5% on all services in India) to ensure its smooth sail.
For his focussed efforts on Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, Prime Minister Mr. Narendra Modi received the ‘Global Goalkeeper’ Award from Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation on September 24, 2019 at the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) Session in New York. We can say Swachh Bharat Abhiyan has brought in a lot of change by making India free from the slur of open defecation. Everyone should realise that cleanliness is not only the responsibility of the sanitation worker or the local government; it is the responsibility of every citizen of the country. The government officers, NGOs and the local communities should initiate cleanliness programmes in their vicinity and motivate people to take part in it. The Government should also fix responsibility on the people and punish them, if they flout. Recently in Jarandi village of Maharashtra, the Gram Panchayat decided to cancel ration cards of those families whose members were caught defecating in the open. In another incident, a man from Indore was made to collect garbage along with sanitation workers as a punishment for defecating in the open. Many people pay attention to personal hygiene but remain apathetic to public and community cleanliness. Change in this mentality is important for achieving the goals of Swachh Bharat Abhiyan.
As we all know that “Cleanliness is next to Godliness”, we can surely say that Swachh Bharat Abhiyan can really bring godliness all over the country, if it is followed by the people of India in an effective manner. Hope that ‘Swachh Paani Mission’ is also made possible by 2024 to provide safe drinking water for all. A healthy country and a healthy society needs its citizens to be healthy and clean. Mahatma Gandhi never compromised on cleanliness. He gave us freedom. We can give ourselves a ‘Clean
India’.