Fri. Mar 29th, 2024

The Narendra Modi government has primarily emphasized the need of ‘cleanliness’ and ‘hygiene’ after coming to power. Several campaigns on the ‘Swachh Bharat Abhiyan’ has been undertaken to spread awareness in rural India. The construction of toilets and clean areas was the primary issue at the beginning of 2014, against open defecation. However, a new addition has been included by introducing the Swachh Survekshaan Grameen, 2018 all over India as the 4th rural project on public cleanliness.

The programme entails an elaborate survey of rural India to rank the cleanest and the least clean states and districts on the basis of ‘qualitative and quantitative evaluation’.

“Citizen engagement is a key objective of this programme,” said Parameswaran Iyer, Minister of Secretary to the Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation at the launch of this event.

The Government has incentivised such a step by adding that it will be proclaiming awards for the best ranking states by October 2nd. This is one of the largest surveys to be undertaken to evaluate the cleanliness of rural India. The programme plans to survey 6,800 villages in 680 districts across the country. It also plans to cover 34,000 public places in the villages.

A feedback mechanism has also been introduced into the process where a digital feedback system through online portals will be available. The decision to include not only figures and statistics but also to take in public assessment and surveyor’s remarks has been added to make the evaluation process better.

“…we hope to get feedback from more than 50 lakh people,” added Mr. Iyer. He also said that he was optimistic that it would ultimately lead to engage the rural community on the benefits of public cleanliness, thereby taking the campaign ‘beyond household toilets’.

The publicity of such an event was also backed by a launch of a visual publicity campaign, featuring Swachh Bharat ambassadors Amitabh Bachchan and Sachin Tendulkar.

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