Swachh Bharat Mission

The Ministry of Urban Development has made public the results of a survey it conducted to assess the level of cleanliness in 476 cities across India. And, in keeping with the more general perceptions about order and cleanliness, a substantial number of cities from South India figured in the top 100.

The Swachh Bharat Mission’s baseline survey report of 2012 named Odisha and Bihar as the states having the worst sanitation figures in the entire nation. While 88% of households in Odisha had no toilets, the figure stood at 78% for the state of Bihar.

The state's high toilet coverage has compounded the problem of water pollution and diseases. It now needs an efficient and affordable sewage treatment system.

Authored By : Manu Moudgil

Sanitation programmes, for several years, were primarily driven by supply. The Swachh Bharat Abhiyan has, or is expected to contribute to shifting the trend from supply driven to one that is driven by demand. However, behaviour change is continuous process.

Census 2011 revealed that 47% of households had access to toilets across the country. Though not enough to be ecstatic, the numbers were certainly better than the 36% recorded in the 2001 Census [1].

In the world’s second most populous country with nearly 355 million menstruating women, 23% of adolescent girls drop out of school after their first period. Only 12% of females in the country use sanitary pads. 10% of girls in India believe that menstruation is a disease [1]!

One of the stated Millennium Development Goals of the United Nations is to improve access to safe drinking water and sanitation and to halve the proportion of population left without the same by 2015.

Recognizing the importance of technology in providing safe drinking water and hygienic living conditions, the Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation has come out with a booklet on innovative and cost effective solutions to provide potable water and sanitation in rural areas.