Going ahead for Swachh Bharat

The Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM), which has just completed 10 years, is one of the big successes of the NDA-II government: The campaign to make India open defecation free (ODF) has been largely achieved, though the challenge lies in sustaining it that way. Many international studies have documented the health benefits of SBM— one such, by US and India-based researchers that was published in Nature Scientific Reports last month, estimated that 60,000-70,000 additional infant deaths were avoided yearly because of the sanitation programmes.