Swachh Bharat needs rebranding, says TISS report

In order to fulfil Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s flagship scheme Swachh Bharat, the mission needs rebranding and measures need to be taken to ensure financial viability of public toilets, a report by Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) has said.

“Recreating an identity of Swachh Bharat Mission around the theme of ‘dignity and self-respect’ has been strongly recommended for the success of the mission through scaling up citizen’s participation,” a senior official in the Ministry of Urban Development told BusinessLine .

This is one among the many recommendations in the 80-page report submitted by TISS, which was prepared after two-week-long citizen consultations, at the behest of the Ministry of Urban Development, in six cities — Lucknow, Patna, Nagpur, Mumbai, Visakhapatnam and Guwahati.

The TISS report proposes a long-term association between the governments and specialists including ad agencies and behavioral scientists for clearly articulating the real value of sanitation.

“In order to ensure financial viability of public toilets, the report suggests adopting a ‘Toilet Plus’ approach with additional facilities for bathing, change rooms, sanitary napkin dispensers, multi-purpose use of toilet buildings linking them with livelihood and community activities,” the official said.

The other key recommendation of the report is levying monthly maintenance charges for community toilets as against pay for use and toilets should be maintained by communities, the official added.

It also suggests that construction of small group toilets with limited access, say for 2 or 3 households, should be preferred as against building large toilet blocks in areas where space is a constraint.

“Creating a statutory National Council for Sanitation has been proposed with representation from civil society, academia, technocrats, policy makers, government officials and other stakeholders.

“The Council can suggest legal reforms to enhance functioning of the Mission besides promoting evidence based policy making,” the official said.

Since the mission’s launch on October 2, 2014, 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 had told reporters on August 6 at the launch of cleanliness survey.

It 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 per cent door-to- door collection and scientific disposal of solid waste at a cost of ₹62,009 crore.