India’s significant cleanliness initiative brought in a huge transformation in sanitation drive through the Swachh Bharat Mission-Grameen (SBM-G), which meets the UN Sustainable Development Goals (#SDG 6 — clean water and sanitation), thereby creating green model villages. India is on the rapid march and making a bold and strong move to make our nation a Sustainable-Smart-Swachh Bharat (3S). India, over a decade of successfully completing the sanitation drive, our nation is a major torchbearer for transforming rural and urban society into a sustainable hygiene community. Swachh Bharat Mission makes every individual socially responsible. India’s dedication towards a holistic approach in adopting the best practices of the sanitation drive led to successful public health hygiene. India has been leading in eradicating open defecation (ODF) through several cleanliness campaigns and awareness initiatives under the inspiring vision and realising the dreams of Honourable Prime Minister of India Shri Narendra Modi. Swachh Bharat forms a key contributor for Mission LiFE — Lifestyle for Environment. India has successfully built pioneering sanitation green infrastructure like Community Sanitary Complexes (CSCs), which gave ease-of-access to every Indian citizen to utilise the sanitation facilities. Our nation’s successful cleanliness cutting-edge interventions like plastic waste management, decentralised operation and maintenance of community sanitation assets, grey water management through soak pits, faecal sludge management through Sewage Treatment Plants (STPs), waste to wealth through GOBARdhan, biodegradable waste management through composting and biogas plants have accelerated India to achieve greater height in cleanliness drive.
India celebrates 10 years of successful completion of Swachh Bharat Mission with 2025 marking a special campaign on e-waste such as unserviceable or discarded electronic devices and systems like computers, laptops, printers, LEDs, storage devices like hard disks, e-display boards, which will pave the way for extraction of critical minerals like lithium, cobalt, nickel and rare earth metals as well. Swachh Bharat Mission is a bold beginning to accelerate the National Critical Mineral Mission, thereby fuelling the achievement of a recycling green economy. The year 2025’s theme for World Ozone Day is From Science to Global Action.
The significance of the theme is to emphasise the vital link between scientific research, innovation, and collective global and community efforts in preserving nature’s ozone layer. The Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM) is actively transforming many neglected Indian landfills into preservative landmarks by utilising bioremediation and biomining to clean waste and then reinventing, redesigning, and redeveloping the reclaimed land into green eco-spaces and digital public infrastructures that benefit every citizen.
Swachh Bharat Mission harnesses the potential of future-ready Industry 4.0 technologies like robots, artificial intelligence, and drone technologies in addressing cleanliness.
Indian start-up like Solinas, incubated at the Department of Science and Technology (DST) — Technology Business Incubator (TBI), NIDHI of IIT Madras, has developed a cutting-edge technology Homosep Atom, which has emerged and transformed traditional and manual cleaning methods into custom-designed robotic solutions. Drone technology has empowered and plays a pioneering role in the Swachh Bharat Mission through cleaning and post-cleaning assessments.
Indian Railways has successfully implemented the drone-based cleaning of railway coaches, thereby ensuring best practices of public hygiene. Drone technology is also being utilised to identify unhygienic and garbage locations, thereby facilitating cleanliness drives.
Swachh Bharat handshakes with India’s Smart City Mission, thereby transforming India to a Viksit Clean Bharat @2047 and realising the vision of several UN Sustainable Goals like SDG 9 (Build Resilient India’s Digital Green Infrastructure; Promote Inclusive and Sustainable Modern New-age Industrialisation and Foster Frugal Innovation), SDG 13, an action to combat climate change thereby reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and SDG 11, a Clean and Sustainable Smart Swachh Bharat.
The writer is the Head of the Institute Industry Interface Program and Assistant Professor in Electronics and Instrumentation Engineering Department