Union Government’s Swachh Bharat push is laudable but it must reach its logical conclusion
The third anniversary of the Swachh Bharat campaign, close as it is to the deadline of an open defecation-free (ODF) India by October 2019, should not be just about stock-taking. Sure there are figures to toss about in pride or criticise for falling short of promise but the recent pictures of a choked Yamuna, literally slivering under the debris of post-festive immersion, have driven home a fundamental truth. That cleanliness has a lot to do with our mindset — regrettably urban attitudes which get looked at as a template for middle India — and must clearly become a multi-stakeholder national movement. This fact has been clearly laid out by Prime Minister Modi as part of his Swachhta Hi Seva call to our collective will. This is not an attempt to dilute the responsibility of the Government or the efficacy of sanitary personnel and their related machinery but to take the next leap of action aligned with them. For a change of mindset cannot be force-fed but has to be a natural corollary of the dissemination of right information, education and communication strategies, compliance and response based on proven results. The Government has already increased the Mission’s allocation from Rs 2,850 crore in 2014-15 to Rs 14,000 crore in 2017-18. Individual toilet coverage has increased from 42 per cent to 64 in 2017. But by equating cleanliness with national service, the Government has clearly moved beyond the propagandist images of celebrities with brooms, mopping up some traction in public places. For the bigger challenge is not about making toilets but ensuring their sustained use. There have been far too may reports about toilets being used as storage or other purposes. It is not about setting them up in an elementary pit-style manner but making sure that the carriage of waste and excreta is through pipelines and sewers. Or that their eliminative treatment does not affect groundwater or surface soil, resulting in a new public health threat. Nobody really considers diarrhoea or bacteria-related fatalities as a public health calamity beyond an anecdote. It is about promoting hygiene behaviour among people in the countryside who still believe that the call of nature should be addressed amid nature. It is about creating micro-level and adaptive modules of solid and liquid waste management. The mission fund disbursal is now geared towards 50 per cent spends for waste management instead of the earlier 75 per cent for toilet construction. Most importantly, it is about neutral cross-verification of ODF status, frequent and random inspections, monitoring schemes and local implementation strategies. The last has been demonstrated by a Madhya Pradesh panchayat imposing steep fines on those defecating in the open. That says a lot about people’s resolve to design their lives. For the first time, the Mission has issued gender guidelines this year, following up on specific ones for menstrual hygiene in 2015. Women swachchagrahis are getting deeply involved to develop a responsive, safe and user-friendly discipline of cleanliness, from the hearth to the heart of the community. Corporates and private organisations need to supplement this holistic effort with infrastructure backup and linkages beyond the photo ops of CSR.