Eleven years after India launched the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, the Union government’s flagship rural sanitation programme, it has missed its target of ‘Sampoorn Swachhata’ by 2024-25, exposing gaps in waste management, untreated sewage, and behavioural change that challenge the sustainability of India’s sanitation progress.

The first phase of the programme focused on making India open-defecation-free (ODF) by 2019, including construction of 100 million household toilets. Over 119 million individual household latrines and 260,000 community sanitary complexes were built, leading the government to declare India open defecation-free by October 2019. But usage remained poor, as IndiaSpend had reported in 2019.

With over Rs 66,000 crore invested, this phase relied on a standardised toilet design that often ignored India’s diverse geographical, topographical, and hydrogeological conditions.

In the second phase, the government set out to achieve ODF-Plus status for all villages, which broadly entails three indicators: ODF sustainability; solid and liquid waste management; and visual cleanliness. The status was to be independently verified at two levels. Further, it emphasised behaviour change, social inclusion, and community-driven systems supported by local volunteers (Swachhagrahis) and technology-enabled monitoring to foster self-sustaining, cleaner rural environments.

As of October 1, about 97 percent of villages have been certified ODF-Plus. Villages that meet all three criteria are termed ‘ODF-Plus Model’ villages. While four in five villages (480,412 of 586,944) have been declared ‘ODF-Plus Model’ villages, 22 percent of these have not completed even the first round of verification, and 89 percent have yet to complete a second verification, government data show.

“SBM-2 introduced the ODF Plus framework, which requires not only household toilets but also safe waste disposal systems--such as functional septic tanks or drainage networks,” says Uzra Sultana, programme manager at Arghyam. “The mission expanded its scope to include faecal sludge management, liquid waste management (e.g., greywater), solid waste management, and waste-to-energy initiatives like biogas generation.

“However, this multi-goal approach has placed a heavy burden on implementing agencies due to limited funding, complex human resource demands, and the challenge of simultaneously meeting diverse targets across waste streams,” she added.

Declarations outpace verification

Phase II of the Swachh Bharat Mission is supported by an outlay of Rs 1,40,881 crore, of which the Union government contributes 37 percent, under the Department of Drinking Water and Sanitation.

Villages are classified as per their performance on the three ODF-Plus indicators:

When ODF sustainability, and either solid OR liquid waste management are met, a village is considered “aspiring”;

“Rising” is when the village has ODF sustainability and both solid AND liquid waste management;

“Model”........

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