Sanitation has become a very important
issue. The government launched Swachh Sarvekshan in August 2017 which
targets surveying 500 Indian cities on basis of sanitation. It is an
attempt by the central government to assess the progress through such
surveys and also incentivise the actors by giving awards to the cities
which are performing better. There are welfare associations, corporate
sector and also the workers at the grassroots level who have to create
mobilisation and change in mindset of the people. Earlier, the survey
was restricted to only 73 cities, now the canvass has been increased and
grounds are being prepared for creating a competitive spirit.
Participation and Ownership is key
In
India, there is no city identity. There is no association with a city
like it is with language, religion, caste etc. If such kind of awareness
building takes place, it is possible that Swachh Bharat Abhiyan is made
successful. One of the major deficiencies in the programme was that
that the governmental programmes and administrative machinery can only
go to a certain extent. Hence, there has to be community involvement and
commitment from people at the grassroots level. The government has now
realised that unless it engages the people into the programme, the
success would be limited.
PM said that safe drinking water is equally important as a preventive health measure. The PM has talked about participatory governance
where the people have to participate in the programme, rear maximum
benefits and make it successful. The people and the opposition parties
as well have the responsibility of creating right kind of environment
which persuades the government to fulfil its commitment.
Numbers are not sufficient
As
per Union Minister of Urban Development, Housing and Urban Poverty, 21
lakh toilets have been built in 2015-16 and target is to build 21 lakh
more toilets in 2016-17. By 2019, over 1 crore toilets have to be built.
However,
success of mission is not dependent only on technology and the physical
capacity to produce these assets. It depends on the utilisation and
maintenance. The social aspect and behavioural aspect are extremely
important along with constructing desired number of units. In the
context of Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, there are different components and the
government is also setting up a technological establishment to ensure
that there is no hurdle technologically. In these components, social
engineering is extremely important. It will the communities’ duty to
maintain the toilets.
The Sarvekshan
is not only about ranking the cities and identifying the best performing
actors and agencies. It is going to be used for monitoring, validation
of the government results through the communities’ feedback and resource
allocation for next round. The data garnered from communities should be
verified with government targets and claims which would make it
possible to asses if the programme is moving forward in right direction.
If the community says there are toilets but no water, the government
can be confronted on that basis with its statistics and take corrective
measures immediately.
Open defecation elimination
