Swachh Bharat Abhiyan (English: Clean India Movement) is a campaign by the Government of India to clean the streets, roads and infrastructure of the country's 4,041 statutory cities and towns.
The campaign was officially launched on 2 October 2014 at Rajghat, New Delhi, by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. It is India's largest ever cleanliness drive with 3 million government employees, and especially school and college students from all parts of India, participating in the campaign. The objectives of Swachh Bharat are to reduce or eliminate open defecation through construction of individual, cluster and community toilets. The Swachh Bharat mission will also make an initiative of establishing an accountable mechanism of monitoring latrine use.
The government is aiming to achieve an Open-Defecation Free (ODF) India by 2 October 2019, the 150th anniversary of the birth of Mahatma Gandhi, by constructing 12 million toilets in rural India, at a projected cost of ₹1.96 lakh crore (US$29 billion). Prime Minister Narendra Modi spoke of the need for toilets in his 2014 Independence Day speech stating.
The programme has also received funds and technical support from the World Bank, corporations as part of corporate social responsibility initiatives, and by state governments under the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan and Rashtriya Madhyamik Shiksha Abhiyan schemes. Swachh Bharat Abhiyan is expected to cost over ₹620 billion (US$9.2 billion). The government provides an incentive of ₹15,000 (US$220) for each toilet constructed by a BPL family.Total fund mobilised under Swachh Bharat Kosh (SBK) as of 31 January 2016 stood at ₹3.69 billion (US$55 million). An amount of ₹90 billion (US$1.3 billion) was allocated for the mission in the 2016 Union budget of India.Government and the World Bank signed a US$1.5 billion loan agreement on 30 March 2016 for the Swachh Bharat Mission to support India's universal sanitation initiative. The World Bank will also provide a parallel $25 million in technical assistance to build the capacity of select states in implementing community-led behavioural change programmes targeting social norms to help ensure widespread usage of toilets by rural households.
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