One year after the launch of the Swachh Bharat Mission, it is clear that the mission is still a long way from meeting its targets and that its approach to the problems of providing sanitation are inadequate.
The Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM) is one of the much touted flagship programmes of the National Democratic Alliance government and was flagged off by Prime Minister Narendra Modi last year on October 2. Its aim is to provide 100 per cent sanitation coverage and eradicate open defecation in rural India by 2019, the 150th birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi.
The Ministry of Urban Development’s latest progress report (October 2015) on the status of implementation by State governments of the various components of the SBM shows that in both urban and rural India not only have the coverage and use of individual and community toilets been tardy but the work of waste collection, disposal and treatment has also not progressed sufficiently. This was despite the fact that in the financial year 2015-16, rural sanitation accounted for 58 per cent of the total allocation to the Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation. But allocations as a whole went down by 48 per cent —from Rs.12,096 crore in 2014-15 to Rs.6,231 crore for 2015-16.
According to Accountability Initiative, the research and analytical wing of the Centre for Policy Research, the Central government had sanctioned only 33 percent of the total allocations to the States until February 2015. Despite 90 per cent of SBM expenditure in 2014-15 being on construction activities, the progress in terms of the total number of individual and community toilets constructed was not substantial. Delays in the sanctioned amount reaching the States was cited as a reason for this. Besides, beneficiaries deemed the Rs.12,000 pegged as the total cost of construction for a toilet for individual homes as inadequate.
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