Evaluating sanitation policy: The case of Swachh Bharat Abhiyan

Abstract

Sanitation is the hygienic means by which an individual aims to preserve her health. It is one of the biggest concerns for counties like India, which are very low on the Sanitation usage scales across the world. The government has tried to reverse the situation by launching various sanitation campaigns like Total Sanitation Campaign, Nirmal Bharat Abhiyan and finally the most recent Swachh Bharat Abhiyan. The schemes have been modified over the years based on learning and past trends and accumulated knowledge. Our objective through this research is the evaluate the Swachh Bharat Mission on the parameter of eliminating open defecation and sanitation. We wish to see through published data whether the mission is actually making groundbreaking differences or is it just a case of old practices being presented in a new manner. The Swachh Bharat Mission claims to have had a considerable impact and seems to be on its way of eliminating open defecation by October 2019. But are the claims of the government valid or is it just an over exaggeration of the efforts to regain power in the next elections. For the purpose of evaluating Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, we compared all the three sanitation schemes based on their stated objectives, budget allocations, implementation and spending of budgets. Through this we can infer that Swachh Bharat Abhiyan is way ahead in terms of the budget and stated objectives. We can then move forward to analyze, if the scheme is actually meeting its said objectives and what things have worked for the scheme and what have not. We have also tried to do a SWOT analysis of Total Sanitation Campaign and Swachh Bharat Abhiyan to have an evaluation of their positive and negative aspects. After our analysis we can infer that Swachh Bharat Abhiyan is actually an add-on from what has occurred in the sanitation sector. It is not only an instance of renaming an old plan like Nirmal Bharat Abhiyan or Total Sanitation Campaign. Instead, it has a whole new set of objectives, budget allocation and implementation schemes. The scheme aims at a greater involvements of states, has a better monitoring scheme and a much larger budget spending on increasing customer awareness. The plan has created more toilets as compared to the previous schemes but the usage rate among rural citizens has not gone up considerably. The scheme is marred with certain implementation barriers which prevent it from achieving its target of making India defecation free by 2019. The SBA is doing much better than the previous schemes but, it is still lagging from the targets it had set to be achieved.