Swachh Bharat Mission

Since India's independence in 1947, there have been three rural sanitation intervention attempts prior to Swachh Bharat Mission: the Central Rural Sanitation Programme, the Total Sanitation Campaign, and the Nirmal Bharat Abhiyaan.[2] The first formal sanitation programme was first launched in 1954 as an extension of the First Five Year Plan of the Government of India. In 1982, National sanitation coverage was just 2%. This was followed by the launch of the Central Rural Sanitation Programme (CRSP) in 1986. These were directed towards the construction of toilets; no behavioral change campaign was carried out, and this supply-based approach did not result in broader social transformation. The CRSP aimed to improve quality of life for rural people and emphasized helping rural women with privacy and dignity. Sanitation increased marginally by 9%. These were construction-led and achieved very little. The Total Sanitation Campaign (TSC) was started in 1999. The TSC focused on increasing awareness around rural sanitation and informed rural populations about sanitation options specific to their living conditions.[28] The Nirmal Bharat Abhiyan (extension of TSC) was enacted in 2009[29][30][31][32] to generate demand for sanitation, linked to subsidy payments for the construction of toilets by families living below the poverty line. The program focused on community-led strategies and helped households, village schools, and community centers. TSC and Normal Bharat Yojana used the Pachayati Raj institutions for social mobilization.

A limited randomized study of eighty villages in rural (Madhya Pradesh) showed that the TSC programme did modestly increase the number of households with latrines, and had a small effect in reducing open defecation. Of the 138.2 million rural households in India (a 2001 figure), nearly 3.5 million constructed toilets.[33] However, there was no improvement in the health of children."[34][35] The earlier "Nirmal Bharat Abhiyan" rural sanitation program was hampered by the unrealistic approach. Lack of strong political will, lack of political leadership and lack of behavior change approach among the people also contributed to the failure of the projects.[36][37] Consequently, Nirmal Bharat Abhiyan was restructured by Cabinet approval on 24 September 2014 as Swachh Bharat Abhiyan.[38]

The rural household toilet coverage in India increased from 1% in 1981 to 11% in 1991, to 22% in 2001, to 32.7% in 2011.[39] On 15 August 2014, Prime Minister Narendra Modi from the Red Fort in Delhi called on the public to pay tribute to Mahatma Gandhi on his 150th birth anniversary by devoting a clean India. Narendra Modi was the first Prime Minister to take up the Clean India Movement on a massive scale.[40][41] Before the launch of Swachh India, 38.4% of rural households had toilets in 2013–14, 43.8% in 2014–15, 51.6% in 2015–16, 65.4% in 2016–17, 84.3% in 2017–18, 98.5% in 2018–19, and 98.5% in 2019–20. 100% toilet facility constructed.[42]

Sources: Dashboard of SBM (Gramin), Ministry of Jal Shakti; PRS.

Vertical bar chart SBM budget (2014-2022) of Swachh Bharat Mission between 14-15 and 21-22

Funds earmarked for Swach Bharath (Gramin) Scheme, written reply by Shri Prahalad Singh Patel, Minister of State for Jal Shakti in Rajya Sabha on 06 February 2023[43]

The National Annual Rural Sanitation Survey of India reported that 96.5% of rural households in India had toilets. in a 2019-2020 report the number was reduced to 1.4% or 19 million.[44][45][46] Since 2014, the Government of India, has made remarkable strides in reaching the Open Defecation Free targets. 36 states and union territories, 706 districts and over 603,175 villages have been declared open defecation free as of Jan 2020.[47]

Where it achieved a measure of success, SBM built on the earlier sanitation programmes. It refined their approaches and templatised the action plan for districts. From the early 2010s, several district collectors and magistrates from West Bengal to Rajasthan experimented with different methods to engage local people and panchayats in community mobilisation. They selected swachhagrahis, trained them and released them for campaigns on a schedule. They were paid from sanitation funds. In states with strong panchayats these measures bore fruit[48] and the gains of sanitation, that is toilet construction, were backed by usage. In other states, little was achieved beyond toilet construction.

Every toilet in every village is mapped in the Integrated Management Information System (IMIS) for real-time progress reporting. Every toilet is mandatorily geotagged to ensure transparency in the entire process.

One of the posters from cartoon based campaign by MCG drawn by the Cartoonist Shekhar Gurera

More than three million government employees, 12 crore school and college students, 6.25 lakh volunteers, 2.5 lakh panchayat leaders, lakhs of public and 50 celebrities are participating in this movement.[49][50][51]

The Prime Minister himself has been the chief communicator of this scheme. He wrote a letter to all 250,000 village president all over the country and encouraging them to reach out to people in their villages for sanitation services.[52]

The rural division of the program is a top-down campaign.[2] Initially, the program was supposed to educate rural people about hygiene and encourage them to make better sanitation choices. High profile performances by celebrities and politicians sweeping the streets to promote Clean India, ignored the serious, unclean work required to maintain the program's latrines (such as manhole cleaning).[2] The high profile celebrities associated with the campaign did little to encourage sanitary practices among rural people.

Manisha Koirala at Swachh Bharat Abhiyan in November 2014

Beach cleaning robot Swachh Bot, made by a maker community in Chennai

Swachh Bharat Abhiyan by Baranagore Ramakrishna Mission Ashrama High School in Baranagar, 2016

• In Kabirdham district of Chhattisgarh, around 1.38 lakh children belonging to 1700 schools wrote to their parents to build toilets in their homes. The impact and initiative of the children has inspired this district to become an ODF district in a very short span of time.[67][68]
• In a single night in 2017, more than 5 crore school children created sketches and essays on cleanliness.
• Anushka Sharma and the Vice President of India M V Naidu picked up a broom to help clean the cyclone-hit port city of Visakhapatnam, in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh, as part of the cleanliness campaign.[69]
• Prime Minister Modi nominated a number of organizations in October 2014 to be "brand ambassadors", including the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India, Eenadu and India Today as well as the dabbawala of Mumbai, who deliver home-made food to hundreds of thousands of people in the city. More than 3 million government employees and school and college students participated in the drive on the occasion.[70][51]
• A Swachh Bharat Run, attended by 1,500 runners, was organized at the Rashtrapati Bhavan on 2 October 2014.[71][72]
• Kunwar Bai Yadav lived in a village in Dhamtari district and sold seven of her goats to raise the money to build a toilet at her house at age 106 in 2016. She was declared a mascot of the campaign and visited by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
• Inspired by the Clean India Mission, a robot named Swachh Bot was built by a maker community in Chennai to clean the wastes on Besant Nagar beach.[22][73]
• More than 10 lakh toilets in India have been decorated with Clean India Project messages as part of Ministry of Water and Sanitation's (MoDW&S) 'Clean Beautiful Toilet Contest'.[74]

Indian Naval Academy cadets taking part in Swachh Bharat Mission, 2016

The Government appointed CPWD with the responsibility to dispose of waste from Government offices.[75] The Ministry of Railways planned to have the facility of cleaning on demand, clean bed-rolls from automatic laundries, bio-toilets, dustbins in all non-AC coaches.[76][77] The Swachh Bharat Swachh Vidyalaya campaign was launched by the Minister of Human Resource Development, Government of India by participating in the cleanliness drive along with the school's teachers and students.[78][79]

Separate toilet facilities for male and female students have been established in schools under the 'Swachh Bharath Swachh vidyalaya' scheme.

The core objectives of the first phase of the mission were to reduce open defecation and improve management of municipal solid waste in both urban and rural areas. Elimination of open defecation was to be achieved through construction of individual household level toilets (often twin pit pour flush pit latrines), toilets and public toilets.[80] For improving solid waste management, cities were encouraged to prepare detailed project reports that are bankable and have a financial model.[80]The goal was to assume a "community-led total sanitation" approach to educate people; critics point out, however, that in the actual implementation, organizers used shaming tactics (to dissuade people from openly defecating) instead of providing respectful education.[81]

The second phase on the other hand focuses on sustaining gains of the first phase and improving management of the solid and liquid wastes.[8]

SBM was budgeted at $28 billion.[13][82] The government provides an incentive of ₹12,000 (US$150) for each toilet constructed by a rural family.[22] An amount of ₹90 billion (US$1.1 billion) was allocated for the mission in the 2016 Union budget of India.[83][84] The World Bank provided a US$1.5 billion loan and $25 million in technical assistance in 2015 for the Swachh Bharat Mission to support India's universal sanitation initiation.[24] This was to be released in installments subject to checks by an independent verification agency but till January 2017, no funds has been disbursed.[85] The programme has also received funds and technical support from several international organizations and private companies as part of corporate social responsibility initiatives, and the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan and Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan schemes.[23]

Swachh Survekshan, commissioned by Ministry of Urban Development and carried out by Quality Council of India, is an extensive sanitation survey across several hundred cities to check the progress and impact of Swachh Bharat Abhiyan and to foster a spirit of competition among the cities. The performance of each city is evaluated on six parameters:

• Municipal solid waste, sweeping, collection and transportation
• Municipal solid waste, processing, and disposal of solid waste
• Open defecation free and toilets
• Capacity building and eLearning
• Provision of public toilets and community toilets
• Information, education and communication, and behavior change

The SBM received political sponsorship from Prime Minister Modi who started talking about sanitation even before he was elected as the Prime Minister.[106] He made a call to address the issue in his first address to the nation on the occasion of Independence day in 2014. Throughout the mission period, he continued to promote the mission through his speeches and was seen wielding the broom multiple times to clean the streets.[107] In 2019, he plogged on a beach in Mamallapuram during his morning walk; he was there to attend the informal summit with Xi Jinping, then-General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party.[108] Other political leaders and public figures including actors and actresses, sports men and women, owners of large business houses were roped in as ambassadors to promote the mission.[54]

Constructing toilets became the mission's singular focus, even though the core objectives were elimination of open defecation and improving solid waste management. Funds for solid waste management under the mission were diverted towards toilet construction.[109] Allocations for other sectors were also drastically reduced. Though behavioral change is one of the goals of the mission, only 1% of the mission's outlay was spent on education and awareness.[110][111] Most of the allocation for the category, “information, education and communication”, that was to be used for awareness generation was spent towards print, radio and television advertisements.[111][109] No part of the Central Government's allocation was spent on awareness generation at the grass roots.[109][111]

The mission was implemented with a target driven approach; villages, districts, towns and cities and even states declared themselves open defecation free (ODF) based on achievement of construction targets.

The SBM has also been criticized for being subsidy-driven rather than community-driven.[112]

For lack of sewerage systems, most of the toilets constructed under the mission rely on single pit or twin pits or septic systems for containment of faecal sludge. However, their appropriateness for the local context was not considered in the haste of achieving construction targets. For example, most of the 7.85 million toilets constructed at an estimated cost of INR 94,205 million in the 15 extreme flood-prone districts of Northern Bihar become unusable during the annual floods.[113] Besides the toilet itself being inaccessible, the containment structure is also inundated with flood waters making it unusable.[113]

The SBM does not even acknowledge the issues of the existing sewerage systems and the deaths of numerous sanitation workers caused in cleaning them.[114]

Even though elimination of open defecation was the core objective of the mission, it was never monitored by either of the Ministries. They both kept a track of toilets constructed and funds spent.[104] Therefore, the reality reported by independent surveys was very different from that reported by Government sponsored surveys.[115] Researchers found divergence between findings of the National Family Health Survey (NFHS) and National Annual Rural Sanitation Survey (NARSS); both conducted by the Government only a few months apart.[104]

By adding millions of on-site sanitation systems and not considering fecal sludge management, it will further add to pollution of the rivers in India.[116]

There is skepticism about the success of SBM which relates to sanitation workers. The people who make India clean, the sanitation workers, remain "invisible in the participation, process or consequences of this national level movement".[117]^: 7 In 2015, one year after the launch of the program, hundreds of thousands of Indian people were still employed as manual scavengers in emptying bucket toilets and pit latrines.[118][119][120] Many continue to work on contractual arrangements without safety of their job and benefits that would accrue from a government job. The SBM has instead burdened the contractual sanitation workers to keep public places clean while keeping it voluntary for the public to deface public places by urinating, defecating or littering them.[114]

A report by WSSCC in 2019 found that the impact of the SBM for the most vulnerable was limited. The report stated that "Barriers due to physical disabilities, social/economic disparities, geography, sexual orientation, gender and caste were not addressed."[121]

Delhi's three municipal corporations identified 543 road dust hotspots in November 2022, using mechanized road sweepers and water sprinklers to reduce dust. They submitted reports on air pollution mitigation measures to the Delhi government's green war room.[122]

Irregularities with regards to the funds have been reported. In Odisha hundreds of beneficiaries have filed complaints that money has been siphoned off without constructing the toilets.[123] In Madhya Pradesh almost half a million Swachh Bharat toilets have "vanished" in a multi billion rupees scam.[124] In Bihar crores of rupees meant for Swachh Bharat Mission were siphoned off by Government officials in collusion with banks[125] Police complaints were filed against those who have misused Swachh Bharat funds for personal household expenses.[126]