Swachh Bharat Mission – the flagship sanitation programme of the Indian government – aims to make India open-defecation free by 2019. However, this has only been achieved in 17 of 686 districts so far. In this article, Bhaskar Pant outlines the key reasons due to which the government’s efforts are not being reflected in the results, and makes suggestions to increase the effectiveness of the programme.

India is home to over 626 million people who defecate in the open. The country accounts for 90% and 59% of people in South Asia and the world, respectively, that practice open defecation (OD). Around 60% of Indians do not have access to safe and private toilets (WaterAid, 2015). The overwhelming majority of those without access to sanitation facilities in India live in the rural areas.

Swachh Bharat Mission, the government’s flagship sanitation programme, will complete two years in October 2016. However, a recent rapid survey1 conducted by the National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO) on the programme has put a big question mark on its ability to achieve the goal of an open defecation-free (ODF) India by 2019. It finds that over half (55.4%) of the population in rural areas still defecates in the open. The situation is better in the urban areas where only 8.9% people defecate in the open2. New data submitted by the Ministry of Urban Development to the Lok Sabha also shows that against a target of constructing 2.5 million individual household toilets by March 2016, only 1.32 million were actually built.

Source – https://www.ideasforindia.in/topics/human-development/making-india-open-defecation-free-by-2019.html