Government's Initiatives towards Sanitation

Published: 2nd Jan, 2020

Government's Initiatives towards Sanitation

The first building block of having a 'New India' by 2022 is the pledge towards a 'Clean India' which will be achieved with the help of three major schemes.
The first major initiative towards sanitation was the Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM) with an aim to accelerate sanitation coverage to achieve an Open Defecation Free (ODF) and Clean India by 2 October 2019.
When the mission was launched, there were only 38.7% of the total household in the country which had toilets. India had the largest population in the world with open defecation.
Under Swacch Bharat Mission (Gramin), 16 cr toilets have been built till now and 5.5 lakh villages have been made Open Defecation Free. This is a whopping jump of 61.1% from 2014 to 2019 with respect to toilet and latrine coverage in India.
5 lakh community toilets were also constructed and 100% door to door solid municipal waste collection was also ensured.
A new Ministry of Jal Shakti was created in May 2019 by reorganizing the existing ministries and departments. Government launched Jal Jeevan Mission (JJM) to bring piped-water supply to all households (Har Ghar Jal) by 2024.
Like the SBM, the JJM mission target is quite ambitious and challenging given the fact that of the 18 crore rural households, only 3 crore rural households have piped drinking water.
The JJM will further boost the sanitation economy and generate new employment in the country.
Government's initiative to curb single-use plastics from 2 October, 2019 will help in significant reduction in littering as about 14 million tonnes of plastic are used annually in the country.
This will not only scale up the ongoing sanitation movement significantly but will also help in combating land and water pollution and improving health of our citizens.