Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday said that the four-year-old Swachchh Bharat Mission(SBM) has emerged as a vibrant mass movement with over 85 million households now having access to toilets for the first time in the country. This even as United Nations Chief Antonio Guterres lauded Prime Minister Narendra Modi for his strong leadership with regard to sanitation.
Over the past four years, 130 crore Indians have paid tributes to Mahatma Gandhi in the form of the Swachchh Bharat Mission. Completing four years today, it has emerged as a vibrant mass movement with commendable outcomes. Over 85 million households now have access to toilets for the first time, Modi said at an event here to mark 149th birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi.
Launched on October 2, 2014, the SBM aims to make all the States in India open defecation free by 2nd October next year.
Political leadership accompanied by public funding, partnership and people’s participation can help the world in achieving total sanitation, he said pointing out that India’s share in the world’s population that practised open defecation was 60 per cent, which has now come down to below 20 per cent.
Addressing the concluding session of the Mahatma Gandhi International Sanitation Convention here, he said 90 per cent of the toilets constructed are being used even as the Government carries out constant follow ups to ensure that cities declared open defecation free “do not fall back on old habits”.
“It is the result of public participation that rural sanitation has increased from 38 per cent before 2014 to 94 per cent now,” the Prime Minister said.
While 25 States have declared themselves as open defecation free, the number of such villages has gone up to 5 lakh, he said. The convention is part of the Union Government’s ‘Swachchhata hi Seva hai’ programme that kicked off on September 15.
He lauded India’s role towards sanitation in direction of achieving Sustainable Development Goal set out to be achieved by 2030. Modi and Guterres signed the Delhi Declaration which embodies pledge of world community towards sanitation.
The result of the survey on sanitation (2018) was announced at the convention. Haryana was awarded the first prize as it emerged the overall first State.