WHAT AILS SWACHH BHARAT MISSION?

WHAT AILS THE SWACH BHARAT MISSION?

Evaluation

 

When I heard that the Swach Bharat Mission (SBM) had been announced I was very elated that at last a positive movement has been made in the right direction with regards to making my India clean. And A CLEAN INDIA PAN INDIA is a thought which is very close to my heart.

But when we look around our own city Ludhiana and see stray cattle grazing on a garbage dump eating plastic query immediately jumps in our mind - Has Swach Bharat Mission touched our lives as a common citizen if yes how much if no then Why not?

Having written that let’s do some critical analysis after six years plus of the SBM which was launched on 02 Oct 2014 by our PM from the Rajghat the Samadhi of our Rashtrapita Mahatma Gandhi whose round spectacles has become a symbol of SBM.

The mission had multiple targets but the major focus got CENTER Ed on making affordable Toilets to stop open defecation for which our country has been infamous for. Be it cultural or societal values, still a certain percentage of population prefers to go for their morning “ do” in the open areas. 

Swach Bharat Mission got so focused on making every village, town and city ODF (Open Defecation Free) as if everything  to make India clean was dependent on this one factor alone. Rest of the issues ranging from personal issues like welfare of the sanitation workers, wages, social status to technical issues like sweeping, garbage segregation, garbage collection, garbage treatment got pushed to the background. As a result of over focus the toilets got their importance in newspaper/tv advertisements and in  movies- Toilet - Ek Prem Katha and  tv serials .

The positives of the SBM since  its launch in October 2014, as the world’s largest sanitation program are that it has changed the behaviour of hundreds of millions of people with respect to toilet access and usage.500 million people have stopped defecating in the open since the SBM began, down from 550 million at the beginning of the programme to less than 50 million today.Under the mission over  9 crore toilets have been built across rural India under the Mission. Villages numbering 5.5 lakh and 615 districts of the country have been declared ODF, along with 30 ODF States.

To quote Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF)  study which shows significant reduction in diarrhoea prevalence and stunting of growth among children in ODF villages, compared to nearby non-ODF villages.

A recent WHO study also reports that Swachh Bharat Mission would have led to the saving of 300,000 lives by 2019 and thus around 150,000 lives would be saved annually .

Despite these positives ,what are issues and challenges of the focused issue of ODF because of the overemphasis on toilet construction rather than focussing on all parameters. Let us take a critical look:

 

The ODF status has been mainly awarded to the village, district or state only based on the number of toilets built without mention of termination of fecal-oral transmission and absence of visible feces in the environment as major parameters in the SBM guidelines. 

These ODF status have been questioned by the Comptroller and Auditor General (CA