People-centric endeavour

Nine years ago, the world’s largest ‘sanitation-behaviour’ change campaign, the Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM) was launched. The Mission was aimed to make the country ‘open defecation free' (ODF). India, at that time, accounted for almost 60 per cent of the world’s open defecation load. Having achieved these aims through the commitment of the people, the next phase of SBM-Grameen seeks to sustain these gains, while also practicing scientific solid and liquid waste management and move to an ODF-Plus status.

Phase-I of the Swachh Bharat Mission–‘Grameen’ (rural) was centered around interventions that impacted individuals. Households were encouraged to build toilets to end the practice of ‘open-defecation’. This resulted in over 11 crore toilets being built across the country. In addition, several studies showed the benefits of living in an ODF village. Households in such villages have been able to save close to Rs 50,000 per year, showed significantly less instances of diarrhoea, and performed better on nutritional indicators like wasting and stunting as compared to non-ODF villages. This shows that ‘Mission-ODF’ has significantly and tangibly benefitted the lives of people.

Currently, we are accelerating towards achieving Phase-II of SBM-Grameen which focuses on sustaining ODF status, implementing technologically safe and economically viable management of solid and liquid waste and visual cleanliness in the villages to achieve ODF Plus Model or sampoorn swachh (complete cleanliness) status. It is abundantly clear that success could not have been achieved without the participation of the common man, making the Swachh Bharat Mission-Grameen a jan andolan (mass movement).

As a result, the second phase of SBM-Grameen takes a holistic, community centric approach, moving towards interventions which are owned, initiated, and managed by the communities themselves. Thus, while priority is accorded to household-level management of faecal matter (through twin pit toilets), greywater (through household soak pit) and organic or wet waste (through household compost pit), the Phase-II guidelines also have specific guidance on creating common community assets like Community Sanitation Complexes (CSCs), and community compost and soakage pits wherever household management is inadequate or infeasible. This requires infrastructure, capacity building, and an understanding of local contexts where sanitation activities and waste management are being undertaken.

Significant steps have already been taken in this direction as India achieves another major sanitation milestone — three-fourth of the total villages in the country i.e., 75 per cent villages achieving ‘ODF-Plus’ status under Phase-II of the mission. An ‘ODF-Plus’ village is one which has sustained its Open Defecation Free (ODF) status along with implementing either solid or liquid waste management systems. As on date, more than 4.40 lakh villages have declared themselves ODF Plus, which is a significant step towards achieving the SBM-G phase II goals by 2024-25.

Fifteen states/UTs which have achieved 100 per cent ‘ODF-Plus villages’ status include Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Dadar & Nagar Haveli, Goa, Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu & Kashmir, Karnataka, Kerala, Ladakh, Puducherry, Sikkim, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Tripura and Uttar Pradesh. Of these, Andaman & Nicobar Islands, Dadra & Nagar Haveli, Daman & Diu, Jammu & Kashmir and Sikkim have declared all their villages as ‘ODF-Plus’ Model villages.

This is just the beginning. Being ODF and ODF-Plus are the minimum standards for our villages to meet. As we strive to make our societies cleaner and healthier, greater collaboration and coordination is necessary between people, local governing bodies and the Union government. In line with this, the government is working as a team and is bringing the same outlook to waste management. Waste has no boundaries, and an integrated approach between urban and rural areas to tackle plastic waste and faecal sludge is being worked out.

With this objective, Swachhata Hi Seva (SHS) 2023 is being organized in collaboration with Urban and Rural teams to achieve a ‘Garbage Free’ India. ‘Swachhata hi Seva’ was first launched by the Prime Minister Narendra Modi Ji in 2017 to make the SHS campaign a jan andolan (mass movement). ‘SHS-Pakhwada’ is a fortnight-long celebration leading up to Swachh Bharat Diwas and Gandhi Jayanti.

This has seen large scale participation from the common man. In August 2017 when SHS was launched, only 67 per cent households had access to toilets, which accelerated pace to make all villages as ODF by October 2019. Since then, ‘SHS fortnight’ has been organized annually, barring 2020 due to COVID pandemic. During this fortnight, various voluntary Shramdan activities are undertaken, and mass mobilization and awareness activities related to sanitation are organized each year.

Around 10 crore people did Shramdaan activities during SHS 2022, and already around 15 crore people have done Shramdaan activities so far. SHS this year has seen more than 32 crore people participating so far in 14 days – averaging around 2.3 crore people participation per day. The culmination of this year’s SHS campaign will take place on October 1 in the form of a nationwide Swachata shramdaan drive from 10 am for which over 6 lakh events have been created, and where I hope that the citizens of the nation will turn out in full force to show their unity, zeal and commitment to the concept of sanitation being everyone’s business.

The people’s participation during ‘Swachhata Hi Seva’ and various campaigns like Sujlam, Swachh Survekshan Grameen, ‘Retrofit to Twin Pit’ campaigns have resulted into the accelerated pace of ODF Plus which increased rapidly from 6.7 per cent on March 31, 2022 to 75 per cent till date.

The seed, which was sown in 2014, has grown up and has been watered for 9 years and is now growing into a robust tree. As we march towards achieving ODF-Plus India by 2025, it is important, not only to be aware of the issues regarding health and sanitation, but also that truly independent individuals and communities take responsibility to clean our surroundings, hold our fellow stakeholders accountable and continue the jan andolan towards sampoorn swachhta.

The journey to sampoorn swachhta is one that will only be complete when people move themselves along the path, taking advantage not only of the policies put forward by the government, but by developing their own responses to sanitation problems, and evolving a decentralized approach that is theirs in mind, body and spirit to ensure that our villages become totally clean and green.

The writer is Minister of Jal Shakti, Government of India. Views expressed are personal