Pledge for making India open defecation free by 2019: opportunity and challenges

This paper seeks to engage in a critical review of Swachh Bharat Mission (Clean India Campaign) launched by Prime Minister of India on 2nd October, 2014. This national programme seeks to accelerate efforts to achieve universal sanitation coverage for making India open defecation free (ODF) and clean by 2019, as a tribute to the 150th Birth Anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi. This entails improving the levels of cleanliness in rural areas through Solid and Liquid Waste Management activities and making villages Open Defecation Free (ODF), clean and sanitized. The Mission shall strive for this by removing the bottlenecks that were hindering the progress, and focusing on critical issues affecting outcomes. This is a new initiative following the successive failure of three national rural sanitation programmes over last almost three decades: Central Rural Sanitation Program (CRSP); Total Sanitation Campaign (TSC); and Nirmal Bharat Abhiyan (NBA).