World Toilet Day: Here’s How Swachch Bharat Can Meet Its Goals

The path to eliminating open defecation for a country of India’s size is bound to be laden with obstacles.

In 2007, India’s President Dr APJ Abdul Kalam and Prince of Orange of the Netherlands inaugurated the World Toilet Summit, thereby endorsing the sanitation agenda at the highest levels.

In 2013, all 193 countries of the United Nations General Assembly unanimously designated 19 November as World Toilet Day. India’s Swachh Bharat Abhiyan was launched the following year along with a clarion call from the Prime Minister for making the country open defecation free by 2 October 2019, Mahatma Gandhi’s 150th birth anniversary.

As part of the campaign, over 57 million household toilets have been built till date, making it one of the largest ever sanitation drives in the history of mankind. The progress has been impressive. Compared to 29.1% in 2005-06, over 70% of households in rural areas now have access to a toilet.

Even more heartening is that behavior change has started becoming discernible. The Swachh Survekshan Gramin survey conducted in 2017 revealed that more than nine out of ten rural households with access to a toilet were using the facility. Similar results were reported from urban areas. A study conducted by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation highlighted that the cases of diarrhoea were 46% lower among children in villages that had been declared open defecation free, as compared to villages that had not achieved that status.

So, does this mean that all is well? The path to eliminating open defecation for a country of the sheer size, complexity and diversity of India is bound to be laden with obstacles.

Detractors of the Swachh Bharat campaign often highlight its failings on the ground such as anecdotal evidence of people defecating outside in areas that have already been declared open defecation free.

The Way Forward

First, we require more research on how social norms affect toilet usage, including intra-household differences.

An agency like the National Sample Survey Office could conduct periodic surveys to facilitate a deeper understanding of behavioral practices in different parts of the country. Initiatives for constructing toilets at scale have been launched in the past as well, however, they have often produced sub-optimal outcomes on account of limited usage.

After all, old habits die hard and it is not easy for people who have been used to defecating in open spaces all their lives to switch to using a toilet, even if it is provided to them free of cost.

Second, we need to make the toilet an object of desire and a status symbol much like the mobile phone and satellite television. This will pave the way for creating a culture of swachhta in the country. In doing so, there is a lot we can learn from countries like Singapore.

At independence, Singapore faced many of the challenges we are grappling with today, including poor sanitation, disease, and poverty. Realising that prevention is far better than cure, national campaigns such as ‘Keep Singapore Clean’ were launched soon after the country’s independence. In a relatively short span of time, the philosophy of cleanliness extended beyond sanitation to various aspects of people’s lives, including water, food, cooking practices, the environment, and even corruption.

Third, clear and replicable protocols are necessary for certifying villages and towns as open defecation free. Systems should also be put in place for re-certification at periodic intervals, including through third-party auditors.

Fourth, as toilet access increases, the focus must shift towards driving the adoption of basic hygiene practices such as handwashing with soap. It is estimated that handwashing can reduce the incidence of diarrhea and acute respiratory infections by 40% and 20% respectively.

Fifth, as more individual household toilets are built, institutional and public toilets especially for informal sector workers, must also remain a priority. While community toilets do fill some of this gap, provisions for meeting regular operation and maintenance costs as well as water availability need to be ensured. Corporations and businesses can play an important role by partnering with the government to construct and maintain these facilities.

All told, India has the opportunity to make history. The building blocks are firmly in place. The government obviously has a big role to play, however, so does every citizen of the country.

Going forward, inspiring individual ownership and action will need to be the main focus of the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan. Yes, the scale and complexity of the task at hand is unparalleled, but it is time to flush away the pessimism and make a concerted effort to realise Gandhiji’s dream of a swachh India.

(Jack Sim is the Founder of the World Toilet Organisation. Urvashi Prasad is a public policy specialist at the NITI Aayog. The views expressed above are the authors own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for the same.)