Swachh Bharat Abhiyan – Clean India

Prachee Bhardwaj

Swacch Bharat mission is also known as Swacch Bharat Abhiyan and Clean India Mission. The main aim of Swacch Bharat mission is to make every road, village, and city clean.

The Swacch Bharat Abhiyan was officially launched by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on the occasion of Gandhi Jayanthi on 2 October 2014.

Swachh Bharat scheme is working separately on rural areas with a name Swacch Bharat Abhiyan Gramin and in urban areas, it is working as Swacch Bharat Abhiyan Rural.

The main aim of this scheme is to construct 12 million toilets in rural areas. As we all know how the people in rural areas are getting diseases by doing open defecation. Even in urban areas also there are some slums where people don’t have toilet facilities. This is one of the saddest things that every government has to think.

So the government of India has taken a strong decision to achieve Open Defecation Free India by 2 October 2019. Once it is achieved then it will become one of the greatest achievement for the Indian government.

Clean India mission includes not only politicians and government employees, it is involving every Indian citizen like school children, college students, private employees, and celebrities.

 

Swachh Bharat Abhiyan was officially started in Rajghat, New Delhi, by cleaning the roads by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The campaign is by far the biggest hygiene campaign in which children of schools and colleges, including about three million government employees, took part. While inaugurating the campaign, the Prime Minister of India had nominated 9 famous personalities to take initiative in the campaign for their campaign and bring about the flow of campaign. He also requested the nine persons to join the campaign in this campaign by continuing to do this series (like branches of a tree) till then that every citizen of India should not be involved in this campaign. Because it is to be completed till 2019, 150th anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi.

The objective of this mission is to convert personal toilets, dry toilets to low cost healthier toilets, hand pump, proper bath arrangements, cleanliness, clean markets or mandis, drains, wetlands, solid and liquid residual removal etc. Along with the system, people have to get awareness about health, cleanliness, environment and personal hygiene. Prior to this mission, on April 1, 1999, the Government of India started a campaign under the name of Total Sanitation Campaign (TSC), however, it was not much effective, after which in this mission The scheme was started for new life, which was called the Nirmal Gram Puraskar. After this, on April 1, 2012, the same program was renamed Nirmal Bharat Abhiyan and in the end it was re-launched as the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan on October 2, 2014.

The main purpose of this campaign is to achieve the dream of India’s Clean India till 2019, 2nd October (150th birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi). These missions are “beyond politics” by the Government of India and to be “inspired by the spirit of nationalism”, it will be credited to the citizens of the whole country. Some other main objectives of this include elimination of open defecation in open areas, elimination of hand-to-hand dispensation, reuse of municipal solid waste and motivation to recycle, cleanliness and health of people Changing the behaviour, connecting it with public health and adding private sector to large scale for capital expenditure and maintenance Etc..

Cleanliness is not linked to only one person or place, it is the responsibility of everyone to really clean India around him in the near future. It is a collective responsibility of 12 billion people living in the country. In order to make this mission a successful and effective mission, the Prime Minister of India nominated nine Indian personalities for the purpose of being included in the campaign so that they could spread awareness through this campaign in their area and further expand this series. Until the message of clean India does not reach all.

The campaign faces formidable financial and implementation challenges. Financially, the government will easily need 2-3% of GDP annually till the target date. There are only four avenues to mobilising such vast resources: increases in revenues made possible by accelerated growth; cuts in middle-class subsidies such as for cooking gas; elimination of enormous leakages in the myriad social schemes by replacing them with cash transfers; and accelerated disinvestment including outright privatization. All roads to Swachh Bharat pass through the thicket of reforms.

Pursuit of Swachh Bharat also requires strengthening public health services. Services such as good drainage systems, absence of swamps and ponds that are home to stagnant water, and the supply of safe drinking water – all of which reduce exposure to and spread of diseases – are classic examples of public goods and require effective government intervention. Swachh Bharat would do well to encourage each state to restart a separate public health department, accountable for the delivery of public health services.