Last year on Oct 2, PM Narendra Modi started the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan which aimed at making the country clean. The Prime Minister himself launched the Abhiyan with a lot of fanfare, he came on the streets to clean them with his team of ministers, and many celebrities also joined the initiative. Let us just analyze, what we have achieved in one year in Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, has really this campaign had changed the lives of common man:
- In one year 95.23 lakh toilets have been built in the rural parts of India, the target is of 12 crore and the time limit for achieving the target is year 2019. Out of these 95.23 lakh toilets, 43.81 lakh were built in the time period of April-October 2014. Government has announced a budget of Rs.1.96 lakh crore for making toilets, out of which only Rs 5000 crore is released, till now.
- Government has announced Rs.62000 crore for making 4041 towns clean, however it is difficult to find any significant impact on the urban areas of the scheme. The scheme of garbage collection and disposal needs a lot of attention and there is a huge scope for improvement. Only 15% of the garbage is processed out of 1.42 lakh tonnes released daily in urban areas.
- Information and Broadcasting Ministry launched an awareness campaign to make people aware of the Abhiyan for which Rs. 170 crore were allocated, out of which Rs. 94 crore have been used by the ministry. The awareness campaign included advertisements and an anthem which was sung by Kailash Kher, and the lyrics were written by Prasoon Joshi. The new anthem will be recorded in the voices of Sachin Tendulkar and Babul Supriyo, many celebrities who were chosen by PM Modi, became the brand ambassadors and many sportspersons, actors also supported the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan.
- Good news for Punjab as by October 2017, it will became the first Indian state to have zero open defecation. At present 75% of the rural population has access to toilets and by 2017, the remaining 25% will also get access to toilets, as announced by the government of Punjab in June.
- Well known Multinationals like Dabur, Infosys, Toyota, Coca Cola, DLF and L&T also became the part of Swachh Bharat Abhiyan.
- Cities of Southern India rank way higher than the cities of Northern India when it comes to cleanliness. Mysore is declared as the cleanest city of India while Damoh (MP) is the dirtiest.
- The mission to clean Ganga is going at a very slow pace; in fact the Supreme Court has expressed displeasure on this slow progress.
- No doubt the numbers of toilets in India, especially rural India have increased, but there is a lot to be done to change the mindset of the people. The rural population is afraid of the open pit toilets getting filled up and one more issue that needs to be taken up is manual scavenging.
Not enough data to get an absolute idea about the success of Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, however the government has shown the path and now it depends on the citizens also to maintain a clean environment around them, after all it is us who needs clear air to breathe.
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