Three years of Swachh India: Rural India numbers showing progress

NEW DELHI: In three years of Swachh Bharat, rural sanitation coverage has increased to 69% from 39%, more than 230-million people in villages have stopped defecating in the open and nearly 5 crore toilets have been built — these are observations of the Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation, which is in charge of PM Modi’s flagship programme.

The focus now is to ensure that villages declared free of open defecation do not “slip back”. Verification of construction of toilets and usage, further building awareness, training of ‘swachhagrahis’ (sanitation motivators) — one in every village — and treatment of waste are the priorities for the government, officials said.

Launched on Gandhi Jayanti in 2014, the programme aims to make India clean and open-defecation-free (ODF) by 2019, the 150th birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi, by building individual, community and cluster toilets.

The ministry said states have made significant progress on the project — 203 districts and about 2.5 lakh villages have been declared ODF, while Sikkim, Himachal Pradesh, Kerala, Haryana and Uttarakhand have become ODF states.

“One of the biggest achievements has been that all the 4,000 villages on the banks of the holy Ganga have become ODF,” a senior official in the government said.