Swachh Bharat Mission—Implementation and Performance in Rural Areas of Select States

Abstract

Mahatma Gandhi once said, ‘Sanitation is more important than independence’ [1]. First Sanitation Programme in India was launched by the Government of India in 1986 which was restructured in 1999 and 2012. But it could not lead to substantial increase in the coverage of rural households with sanitation facilities. After 64 years of independence, Census 2011 revealed that 67.30% rural households had no access to the toilet in India. The present Government which was formed in 2014 put sanitation in its top priorities and launched Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM) on 2 October 2014. One of the objectives of this Mission is to achieve open defecation free (ODF) status by 2 October 2019 as a tribute to ‘Mahatma Gandhi’ on his 150th birth anniversary. The problem of open defecation is not equally distributed among the States of India. This paper tries to evaluate the impact of the Mission considering the increase in coverage of households with sanitation facilities in six States, namely Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Odisha and West Bengal by 31 March 2017 which had 675.02 lakh rural households without access to toilets accounting for 60.75% of total uncovered households with the individual household toilet in India as per the Baseline Survey conducted by Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation in 2012–13.