Did The Swachh Bharat Abhiyan Face Implementation Challenges?

The Swachh Bharat Rural and Urban Programme have gathered the most of the limelight amongst the many other initiatives launched by the Government of India. From the Prime Minister to the top celebrities, this initiative saw many such influential names pro Swachh Bharat Rural moting the need for sanitation and cleanliness amongst the general public. However, the implementation of these urban and rural development programmes haven’t been easy, and it faced a lot of challenges. Few of the stumbling blocks are mentioned below:

The major challenge faced by the government in implementing Swachh Bharat Abhiyan in the Gramin area is to introduce behavioural change amongst the population. Most of the villagers were comfortable in defecating in the open and saw that as an opportunity to socialise with other villagers. They remained oblivious to the cons of this unhealthy practice.

Even after toilet construction in Swachh Bharat Abhiyan rural parts of the country, the government was unable to draw the rural population’s attention towards their motive of ending open defecation. Several villagers in areas of Uttar Pradesh used the newly built toilets as a storehouse to store the feed for their cattle and continued relieving themselves in the open.

Another concern faced by the government involved finding a trained workforce and volunteers to trigger behavioural change amongst the villagers. In order to ensure the volunteers kept up with their task, they needed to motivate them through good incentives.

The absence of proper sewage systems probed a severe challenge when it came to implementation of Swachh Bharat Abhiyan Gramin scale. As the population went out to defecate, the areas lacked a working sewage system to treat the generated sewage. Thus before constructing toilets, the government also had to address this problem.

To tackle all these challenges and in order to implement behavioural change at the grass-root level in rural parts of the country, platforms like India Sanitation Coalition enable the implementers to work together with the funders and bring out the change the country seeks badly.

Good sanitation is essential to protect oneself and to protect the environment and to achieve sustainable sanitation; one must ensure the water sources are not contaminated, and everybody adheres to the healthy practices.