Budget 2014 promises Swachch Bharat by 2019

In a bid to make a Swachch Bharat, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley in his Budget speech said, the government intends to cover every household by total sanitation by 2019 through the 'Swachch Bharat Abhiyan' programme.

Swachh Bharat Mission will be a tribute to Mahatma Gandhi on his 150th birth anniversary, as the Government wants to celebrate it with a spick and span India.

This goal of a clean India was also set by the previous UPA government and the erstwhile government's plan was to achieve 100 per cent access to sanitation for all rural households in the country by 2022. For completion of this goal they were working under the programme Nirmal Bharat Abhiyan (NBA).

The Government started the Central Rural Sanitation Programme (CRSP) in 1986 to provide sanitation facilities in rural areas.

Budget 2014 promises Swachch Bharat by 2019

But CRSP could not really help in solving this gargantuan problem. Low financial allocations, led to the failure of this Programme. As per reports, "The experience of community-driven, awareness-generating campaign based programme in some States and the results of evaluation of CRSP, led to the formulation of Total Sanitation Campaign (TSC) approach in 1999."

The aim of this programme was that a ‘demand driven approach' is adopted with increased emphasis on awareness creation and demand generation for sanitary facilities in houses, schools and for cleaner environment.

The very low incentive under the TSC also played havoc with the programme. To accelerate the progress of sanitation in rural areas, Government had overhauled the Total Sanitation Campaign as the Nirmal Bharat Abhiyan (NBA) in the twelfth Five Year Plan.

Why Swachch Bharat Abhiyan:

NBA, which is currently implemented in 607 rural districts across the country will soon be replaced by the Swachch Bharat Abhiyan. Even after spending so much money in several programmes to solve this sanitation problem, nearly 626 million people continue to defecate in the open in our country as they have no access to toilets. Thus, this abhiyan is needed.

The announcement to launch this new mission came in the backdrop of Badaun rape and murder case of two sisters who went missing after they went to relieve themselves in the open at night. This highlighted the need of toilets and basic amenities facilities across the country to prevent such crimes as well as other health issues.

Even President Pranab Mukherjee had said in his speech, "We must not tolerate the indignity of homes without toilets and public spaces littered with garbage." So we should help in making our country a Swachch Bharat.

The Budget 2014 as said by our Finance minister is only a step in the direction of economic recovery. We just hope that with all these measures taken by our Government a better, cleaner and vibrant India will soon be visible.