October 17, 2024
📰 FEATURE STORY
Ten years of Swachh Bharat Mission – Has it worked?
While India achieved considerable economic progress post-independence, it still had a long way to go on the cleanliness and hygiene front. Millions lacked access to clean toilets, and open defecation was quite common across many parts of the country.
While there have been programmes and initiatives aimed at making India cleaner, the launch of the Swachh Bharat Mission soon after Prime Minister Narendra Modi took office was a notable moment. He made sanitation and cleanliness a part of the government’s agenda. It has now been a decade since the Mission was launched. Has it made any difference?
Context
Even by the standards of poor countries, many regard India as a filthy country. Several water bodies are polluted, air pollution chokes the big cities, and the amount of waste generated is tough for civic officials to keep up with.
Then there’s the issue of accessible toilets. According to the 2011 census, 53.1% of rural and urban households lacked toilet facilities. It’s a perennial problem across the country where public toilets are scarce. Those that are there are poorly managed and maintained. People have no option but to urinate and defecate in the open. It’s particularly arduous for women since it’s a public health risk. It’s not just in rural or remote areas.
New research published in Nature stated that India is responsible for around one-fifth of global plastic emissions at 9.3 million metric tonnes per year. That puts India at the top of the emitters’ list, ahead of countries like China.
As India’s population grew, more people became affluent, rapid urbanisation happened, and more waste was generated. Despite the best efforts of local civic bodies, waste management services have struggled to keep up. While waste segregation is mandated in several states, it’s not practised properly or uniformly. That means waste, especially plastic, ends up in landfills instead of being recycled. These and much more have painted India in a negative light concerning cleanliness and hygiene.
Less than six months into his first term as Prime Minister in 2014, Narendra Modi launched the Swachh Bharat Mission – the most ambitious cleanliness campaign in Indian history. It was launched on October 2, the birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi. He said in part, “A clean India would be the best tribute India could pay to Mahatma Gandhi.”
Since the launch, the government, its allies, and Modi himself have put enormous effort into making the Mission a flagship initiative. It got special mentions in Independence Day speeches and campaign rallies. No part of the government was spared as everyone from the Cabinet through the ministries and state and local officials were involved.
A decade since its launch, the Mission has been touted by the government and its allies for its achievements in building toilets and cleaning up cities. How far is that true?
VIEW: It has been transformative
The achievements speak for themselves. In 2018, the WHO estimated that 3 lakh deaths due to diarrhoea and protein-energy malnutrition would be avoided thanks to the Mission for villages from 2014 to 2019. A study in Nature said the Mission may have led to 60,000-70,000 fewer infant deaths from 2014 to 2020. 66 lakh individual toilets were built against the target of 59 lakh. Over 5.5 lakh villages and nearly 4,000 cities have been declared open-defecation-free. These have been backed up by other data sets, including from the National Family Health Survey (NFHS).
We also need to consider the impact on things like healthcare expenditure. The National Health Accounts (NHA) data on health spending for 2020-21 and 2021-22 showed that out-of-pocket expenditure as a proportion of total healthcare expenditure reduced from 64.2% in 2013-14 to 39.4% in 2021-22. People aren’t falling sick as much due to poor or no toilet facilities.
One of the core tenets of the Mission was that it was clearly divided into categories for villages and cities. The focus areas were clearly laid out – individual and community toilets, solid waste management, and campaigns for behavioural change. These three components have worked in harmony to ensure the Mission’s effectiveness. Overall, the Mission has been successful and serves as an excellent example of cooperative federalism.
COUNTERVIEW: Not as rosy as it seems
The government has lauded the data on the number of toilets built and access to them. It even cited the Nature study as validation for the Mission’s success. However, we don’t know what percentage of those toilets are used. Merely providing access to sanitation doesn’t guarantee effective usage. There’s little to no data on this, and it sheds doubt on links to infant mortality. There could have been other healthcare schemes that could’ve contributed to lower deaths.
While reports of reduced open defecation are correct, they’re nowhere near what the government has proclaimed. While the government declared India open defecation-free in 2019, the fifth National Family Health Survey for 2019-21 showed that about 20% of households still practised open defecation. That’s among the highest in the world. One study in Tamil Nadu found that while there was awareness of toilets being built, people weren’t aware of subsidies allotted under the Mission and how to maintain the toilets.
For cities, the Swachh Bharat Mission-Urban (SBM-U) 2.0 was launched in 2021 to make cities “garbage-free” by clearing 2,400 legacy landfill sites by 2026. This hasn’t been successful. Government data showed that cities failed to clear even 50% of their landfills. Municipal corporations have failed to act accordingly. Without scientific waste and garbage collection and disposal, India’s cities are becoming a health hazard with accumulating waste.
Reference Links:
- What a research project taught us about Swachh Bharat Mission – India Development Review
- The role of trendsetters in the popularization and adoption of the Swachh Bharat Mission (2020) – UNICEF
- How Swachh Bharat Mission advanced progress on safety and dignity, health and economy – The Indian Express
- Clearly, cleaning India is working – The Economic Times
- Transforming India’s Sanitation Story: Swachh Bharat Abhiyan’s Decade of Change – News18
- Why the Nature paper on Swachh Bharat Mission, lauded by Modi, should be read with caveats – Frontline
- Cleanliness eludes Amritsar even 10 years after launch of Swachh Bharat Mission – The Tribune
What is your opinion on this?
(Only subscribers can participate in polls)
a) The Swachh Bharat Mission has been successful over the past decade.
b) The Swachh Bharat Mission hasn’t been successful over the past decade.
Previous poll’s results:
- The Physics and Chemistry Nobel Prizes to AI researchers were the right call: 27.3%
- The Physics and Chemistry Nobel Prizes to AI researchers were the wrong call: 72.7% 🏆
🕵️ BEYOND ECHO CHAMBERS
For the Right:
Self-employment and its precarity in India
For the Left: