Essay on Swachh Bharat Abhiyan

Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, or the Clean India Mission, is a nationwide cleanliness campaign of the Government of India. It was launched by the Prime Minister on 2 October 2014, the birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi, who believed that cleanliness is next to godliness. The mission has two main aims: to end the practice of defecating in the open by building toilets for every household, and to keep streets, roads and public places free of garbage through proper collection and treatment of waste. A very large number of household and community toilets have been built in villages and towns under it. But no government can keep a country clean by itself. The mission will succeed only when every citizen stops littering and spitting, uses dustbins and toilets, and treats public places like his or her own home.

Mahatma Gandhi once said that sanitation is more important than independence. He himself cleaned the ashram toilets to show that no work is low. To honour his dream of a clean India, the Government of India launched the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan on 2 October 2014, his birth anniversary. The Prime Minister began the campaign by picking up a broom himself.

The need for such a mission was clear. Heaps of garbage on roadsides, choked drains, dirty railway stations and people relieving themselves in the open were common sights. Dirt is not only ugly. It spreads diarrhoea, cholera, typhoid and many other diseases, which kill children and keep families poor. Dirty surroundings also hurt tourism and the image of the country.

The mission has two parts, one for villages and one for cities. The first goal was to make India "open defecation free" by 2 October 2019, the 150th birth anniversary of Gandhiji. For this, the government gave money to poor families to build toilets at home, and community toilets were built in public places. The second goal is solid waste management: collecting garbage from every door, separating wet and dry waste, and recycling or treating it instead of dumping it. Cities are ranked every year in a cleanliness survey called Swachh Survekshan, which has created a healthy competition among them.

The campaign is also about changing habits. Film stars, players, students and ordinary citizens have joined cleanliness drives. Schools hold rallies and teach children to wash hands with soap. Many people now think twice before throwing a wrapper on the road.

Much has been achieved, but much remains. A toilet is useful only if it is used and kept clean. A dustbin helps only if we walk up to it. As students, we can do a great deal. We can keep our classroom and playground clean, carry our wrappers home if there is no bin, refuse plastic bags, and politely stop others from littering. We can keep separate bins for wet and dry waste at home.

A clean country is not built by sweepers alone. It is built by citizens who do not make it dirty in the first place. If one hundred and forty crore Indians take one step each towards cleanliness, the nation moves one hundred and forty crore steps forward.