Swachh Bharat Abhiyan (SBA) (Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM) or Clean India Mission in English) is a campaign in India that aims to clean up the streets, roads and infrastructure of India’s cities, smaller towns, and rural areas. The objectives of Swachh Bharat include eliminating open defecation through the construction of household-owned and community-owned toilets and establishing an accountable mechanism of monitoring toilet use. Run by the Government of India, the mission aims to achieve an Open-Defecation Free (ODF) India by 2 October 2019, the 150th anniversary of the birth of Mahatma Gandhi, by constructing 90 million toilets in rural India at a projected cost of ₹1.96 lakh crore (US$30 billion).[1] The mission will also contribute to India reaching Sustainable Development Goal Number 6 (SDG 6).
Thank you for reading this post, don't forget to subscribe!The campaign was officially launched on 2 October 2014 at Rajghat, New Delhi by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. It is India’s largest cleanliness drive to date with 3 million government employees, school students, and college students from all parts of India participating in 4,041 statutory cities, towns and associated rural areas. Modi has called the campaign “Satyagrah se Swachhagrah” (लघु फिल्म सत्याग्रह से) in reference to Gandhi’s “Champaran Satyagraha” launched on 10 April 1917.
The mission contains two sub-missions: Swachh Bharat Abhiyan (“Gramin” or rural), which operates under the Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation; and Swachh Bharat Abhiyan (Urban), which operates under the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs.
As part of the campaign, volunteers, known as Swachhagrahis, or “ambassadors of cleanliness”, have promoted indoor plumbing and the Community Approaches to Sanitation (CAS) at the village level. Other non-governmental activities include national real-time monitoring and updates from non-governmental organizations (NGOs) such as The Ugly Indian, Waste Warriors and SWaCH Pune (Solid Waste Collection and Handling) that are working towards its ideas of Swachh Bharat.
History
Open defecation and sewage contamination of drinking and bathing water has been an endemic sanitary problem in India. In 2017, India was the country with the highest number of people practicing open defecation, around 525 million people.
Launch
Swachh Bharat Abhiyan campaign, launched on 2 October 2014 on Gandhi jayanti , aims to eradicate open defecation by 2 October 2019, the 150th anniversary of the birth of Mahatma Gandhi, by constructing 90 million toilets in rural India at a projected cost of ₹1.96 lakh crore(US$29 billion).The national campaign spans 4,041 statutory cities and towns.[13][14] conceived in March 2014 at a sanitation conference organised by UNICEF India and the Indian Institute of Technology as part of the larger Total Sanitation Campaign, which the Indian government launched in 1999.
