Former Union Minister for Drinking Water and Sanitation, Government of India
‘Whoever throws dirt in the Street … Whoever causes mire or water collection in the Street … Whoever excretes faeces in pilgrim places, reservoirs, public places … shall be punished with fines’ and ‘Nagaraka (City Superintendent) is punishable if he derelicts his duty’ in the enforcement.
(Kautilya in Arthashastra , Chapter XXXVI, Book II)
FROM THE INDUS valley civilization to the vast Mauryan Empire, public sanitation was always given great importance in ancient India. As is so starkly pronounced by Kautilya, the ancient Indian states had punishment provisions for people polluting land and water.
Millennia since, through more than two centuries of colonization, India was driven to lose her connection with swachhata. That is, until 2014 – when the Prime Minister’s clarion call to our mighty population of 130 crore people brought about a sanitation revolution never seen before by the world. The Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM) kept the focus strictly on behaviour change and created a community- based collective behaviour change movement, arguably the largest the world has ever seen.
Under the inspiring leadership of the Prime Minister, Shri Narendra Modi, who has been the torchbearer and chief communicator of the Mission, SBM has touched the right chord with every Indian. In the last five years, swachhata’s enlightening message has reached all villages in rural India, with the participation of crores of Indians, and especially over six lakh swachhagrahis, our able ground force. As a result, as of June 2019 almost every Indian household has access to a toilet – an unimaginable state of things even five years ago.
My faith in our holy river Ganga is well known. The Ganga, deeply revered by all Indians, is the longest river in India, running through five states – Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand and West Bengal. Every day, thousands of devotees take a dip in the holy river, hoping for salvation. However, for many decades, unabated discharge of industrial and human waste had contributed to the pollution of this holiest of rivers. As a result, it figures among the ten most polluted rivers of the world.
To make the river clean again and initiate its conservation and rejuvenation, the Namami Gange programme was launched in June 2014 under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. As the then Minister for Water Resources, River Development and Ganga Rejuvenation, it was my honour to lead this programme. It was based on the following key pillars: creating sewerage treatment capacity, riverfront development, river surface cleaning, biodiversity conservation, afforestation, industrial and direct discharge monitoring, and generating public awareness around the Ganga.
The programme has seen great success: 28 riverfront development projects and 33 entry-level projects for construction, modernization and renovation of 182 ghats and 118 crematoria have been initiated, and many completed. River surface cleaning activities for the collection of floating solid waste from the surface of the ghats and the river, and its disposal are afoot and pushed into service at 11 locations.
Several biodiversity conservation projects are underway, such as Biodiversity Conservation and Ganga Rejuvenation, fish and fishery conservation in the Ganga, and the Ganges River Dolphin Conservation Education Programme. Forestry interventions for the Ganga through the Wildlife Institute of India, Central Inland Fisheries Research Institute and Centre for Environment Education have been initiated. Forestry interventions for Ganga have been executed as per the detailed project report prepared by Forest Research Institute, Dehradun, for a period of five years (2016–21) at a project cost of Rs 2,300 crore.
Real-time Effluent Monitoring Stations (EMSs) have been installed in 572 out of 760 Grossly Polluting Industries (GPIs). Until now, the discharge into the Ganga of more than 500 drains has been stopped in Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand and Bihar, and 63 sewerage management projects are under implementation in these states.
When I took charge of the Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation (MDWS), we brainstormed on how the Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM) might complement the goals of Namami Gange and how it can contribute substantially towards the swachhata of the villages on the banks of the Ganga. We have worked closely with states through which the river passes to ensure that all 4,465 villages in 1,662 gram panchayats on the banks of the Ganga have become Open Defecation Free (ODF) under SBM. This feat was achieved on 12 August 2017. Befittingly, a grand sammelan of the sarpanchs from all the panchayats concerned was organized at Prayagraj on that day and all present took an oath to keep villages on the banks of the Ganga clean. This success in a very short time period has been primarily due to the extensive engagements of the Ministry with the state governments, capacity building of the district magistrates, regular field visits and rigorous monitoring and follow-up.
A self-sufficient technology of faecal sludge management suitable to rural India, the twin-pit toilet technology was encouraged in these villages. However, making these villages ODF was not limited to toilet construction. A bigger aspect of the programme was to create awareness among the communities for sustained use of toilets, to keep their villages clean, not to use plastic, and to not have any direct untreated effluent discharge into the river. The people took an oath to preserve the sanctity of the river and never to pollute it.
At the same event in Prayagraj on 12 August 2017, MDWS, in collaboration with the National Mission for Clean Ganga (NMCG), launched the Ganga Gram Project, to create model villages on the banks of the Ganga with end-to-end solid-liquid waste management, cleanliness and development. This project was developed to have an integrated approach for the holistic development of the villages on the banks of the Ganga.
Some of the key objectives of the Ganga Gram Project are:
A voluntary forum, the Ganga Swachhata Manch was formed to encourage local villagers, opinion makers, youth leaders and academic institutions to make these riverbank villages clean through a people’s movement.
In order to strengthen the Ganga Gram Project and to make this movement a jan andolan, a series of activities such as public events, workshops, seminars and conferences and numerous Information, Education and Communication (IEC) activities have been organized to make a strong pitch for public outreach and community participation in the programme. Various awareness activities through rallies, campaigns, exhibitions, shramdaan, cleanliness drives, competitions, tree plantation drives and development and distribution of resource materials were organized and widely publicized.
MDWS has also been organizing Ganga Swachhata Chaupals in many riverbank villages. Recently, huge Ganga Gram Swachhata Sammelans were organized at five places: Sahibganj in Jharkhand, Buxar in Bihar, Kannauj and Bithoor in Uttar Pradesh and Srinagar in Uttarakhand in which thousands of rural women and villagers participated. Their overwhelming support towards Ganga Grams makes me confident that very soon we will restore the past glory of the Ganga.
I have attended all these sammelans and have told the villagers about the degenerating effect of open defecation and improper waste disposal. I normally ask them to take an oath with me to sustain the behaviour change, adopt clean and healthy habits, promote organic farming and preserve the sanctity of mother Ganga. We sensitize villagers to construct soak pits/leach pits at the household level and waste stabilization ponds at the community level, for grey water management.
MDWS, in coordination with NMCG and the Government of Uttar Pradesh, has also started a tree plantation drive in all the villages on the bank of Ganga. As of May 2019, approximately 1 crore trees have been planted to rejuvenate River Ganga.
The toilet access in rural India has already reached 99.3 per cent as of June 2019, and we need to not only sustain it but also to focus on ODF-plus interventions thoroughly. The villages along the riverbank have taken a lead in this regard, and I am sure that their enthusiasm for holistic swachhata will soon spread to the rest of the country.