Swachh Bharat Mission

The focus of the strategy is to move towards a Swachh Bharat by providing flexibility to State Governments, as Sanitation is a state subject, to decide on the campaign implementation policy and mechanisms. So, while, activities vary, the suggested approach is to adopt community-led and community saturation approaches, focusing heavily on collective behavioural change. Emphasis is to be placed on awareness generation, triggering behaviour change and demand generation for sanitary facilities in houses, schools, Anganwadis (courtyard shelters started in 1975 as part of the Integrated Child Development Services programme), and places of community congregation, as well as for SLWM activities. The focus is on interpersonal communication (IPC), especially of triggering of demand and use of toilets through social and behaviour change communication (SBCC) and house-to-house interventions. Since ODF villages cannot be achieved without all the households and individuals conforming to the desired behaviour of toilet use, every day and every time, community action and generation of peer pressure on the outliers are the key. Therefore behaviour change communication (BCC) focuses on triggering entire communities. Community-based monitoring and vigilance committees are deemed essential to create peer pressure.

Social mobilisation is taking in part through activities described on, and made possible by public participation in, the interactive SBM website. For example, "Swachh Bharat Challenge is an initiative to share your experiences of Swachh Bharat Abhiyan and invite other people to accept the challenge and join hands in the Abhiyan. You can open up the challenge to a maximum of nine persons and similarly, each of these nine persons can also challenge nine more...this way the chain of activities would keep growing." People take photos of "before" - e.g., a place where everyone would throw their garbage - and then extend a challenge online for people to clean it up. Similarly, Swachh Bharat Activity enables you to share "before" and "after" pictures and videos of your contribution to Swachh Bharat Abhiyan. One entry reads: "Music to create the awareness on Waste Management in Mangalu". There is also an online pledge that involves, among other actions, devoting 100 hours per year to volunteer work for cleanliness and encouraging 100 other people to take the pledge. (In this way, as of August 2016, 1,886,133 students had taken the pledge. Photographs of mass pledge ceremonies by organisation/institution are posted on the SBM website.) In communicating about SBM in their social media activities, people are asked to use the hashtag #MyCleanIndia.

Entertainment-education strategies also play a role in, for example, SBM's TV ad "Don't Let Her Go", which features Bollywood film stars Kangana Ranaut and Amitabh Bachchan. The public service announcement (PSA), featuring a song, shows a people from various backgrounds worshipping the deity Lakshmi, goddess of wealth; yet, they still are guilty of littering. The moment that happens, the picture of Lakshmi blanks out, and she is shown walking away. The message is that we need to respect our streets just like we respect our homes: "Cleaniness is next to goddess." The video quickly collected over 1.4 lakh views on YouTube.

Information, education, and communication (IEC) is a central component of the programme. It strives to bring about community-wide behavior change and trigger demand for sanitation facilities. For example, noting that the nation's children can be catalysts of change, on August 31 2016, the Ministry of Urban Development signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Amar Chitra Katha to publish and distribute a comic book to promote awareness on sanitation. The 32-page comic book will carry messages pertaining to sanitation and solid waste components of SBM. It will comprise a series of inspirational stories from the mission, cleanliness rankings of cities, images of public figures and ambassadors, environmental impact, and stories of individuals and organisations. The comic book will also have an interactive workbook of tips for children to clean their own areas, organise community cleanliness drives, etc. "Youth and students are one of the biggest change agents for any social transformation and the comic book would aim to engage with them in an innovative manner and spread the message of cleanliness," Union Urban Development Minister M Venkaiah Naidu said. Amar Chitra Katha will develop and create the comic book in English and translate it into Hindi. The Ministry will distribute the comics through national school boards.

Along these lines, the government is engaging youth in SBM and building their capacity to take action. In August 2016, the government announced its impending launch of a cleanliness awareness campaign in the National Capital Region (NCR) by including youth in a pilot engagement exercise. "The Ministry of Urban Development will soon launch an 'Asli Tarakki' (real development) campaign in the six cities of the NCR with 450 select youth with communication skills and leadership qualities as lead motivators to promote awareness about the need for sanitation," an official statement said. The youth will be selected during a 2-day orientation workshop and will be given further training to undertake awareness and motivational campaigns through elocution, cultural performances, nukkad nataks (street plays), etc. The young people participating in Asli Tarakki will work on the campaign for 52 days in each of the 5 municipal areas of Delhi, Faridabad, Gurgaon, Ghaziabad, and Noida. They will encourage people to take the Swachh Bharat Pledge for a clean India, inform targeted beneficiaries about the government support for building individual, community, and public toilets, and encourage citizens to give feedback on different components of 'Swachh Survekshan-2017'. Launched in early August 2016, the latter is to be conducted in January 2017 and will rank 500 cities/towns with a population of 1 lakh and above based on their sanitation level. A kick-off workshop to raise awareness amongst the locals about the mission was conducted in Delhi which was attended by all 500 cities through video conferencing where 'Swachhata App' as well as a short movie about Swachh Survekshan was also launched. Monitored by the central government, the app (downloadable free of charge) will enable people all across India to upload photographs of any place which is unclean. Moreover, as part of Asli Tarakki, 4 chariots will be deployed in each of the 9 municipal areas with banners and posters on sanitation, a public address system will address people on key issues, and there will be facilities for showing audio-visual films and for distributing IEC material, the Ministry said.

Sanitation

SBM envisages construction of 1.04 crore individual household toilets in all the 4,041 statutory cities and towns besides 5.08 lakh community and public toilets and 100% door-to-door collection and scientific disposal of solid waste. Since the mission's launch, construction of 21 lakh household individual toilets has been completed, and construction of another 21 lakh toilets is in progress, Urban Development Minister M. Venkaiah Naidu told reporters on August 6 2016 at the launch of cleanliness survey. Other non-communication-related activities being undertaken to support these objectives are:

• Construction of Individual Household Latrines: The SBM aims to ensure that all rural families have access to toilets. The incentive for construction of toilet is Rs. 12,000, including a sub-structure and super structure along with water facilities for cleaning and hand washing. Different options of sanitary toilets are made available for the information and convenience of households.
• Rural Sanitary Mart (RSM)/Production Centre (PC): RSM is an outlet dealing with the material, hardware, and designs required for construction of sanitary latrines, soakage and compost pits, vermin composting, washing platforms, domestic water filters, and other sanitation and hygiene accessories. PCs are the means to produce cost-effective and affordable sanitary materials at the local level as per local demand suitable for rural consumption. The RSM/PC caters to the need of sanitary materials of the local rural households (HHs).
• Provision of Revolving Fund: The HHs not covered for incentives under SBM can avail loans from this head and after construction of toilet repay the loan in installments. The self-help groups (SHGs)/other groups as decided by the state/district can also avail loans from this fund, and MDWS has the authority to decide about the modalities.
• Community Sanitary Complex (CSC): CSCs comprising an appropriate number of toilet seats, bathing cubicles, washing platforms, wash basins, etc. are to be constructed in such a place in the village that is acceptable and accessible to all. Such complexes can also be made at public places, markets, bus stands, etc. where large-scale congregation of people takes place.
• SLWM is one of the key components of the programme.