Can a massive infrastructure campaign change the deep-seated sanitation habits of a nation?

History · Published 3 October 2026 Swipe more like this →

In short: Launched in 2014, the Swachh Bharat Mission aimed to eliminate open defecation across India by constructing 90 million toilets. While the project achieved record-breaking infrastructure growth, it sparked intense debate over the effectiveness of top-down mandates versus the complex, slow-moving reality of genuine behavioral change in rural communities.

The Swachh Bharat Mission, or Clean India Mission, was inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on 2 October 2014. It represented a significant escalation of India's long-standing sanitation efforts, which trace back to the 1954 formal sanitation program and subsequent initiatives like the 1986 Central Rural Sanitation Programme and the 1999 Total Sanitation Campaign. By the time the mission launched, national rural sanitation coverage stood at roughly 38.4 percent, and India faced the world's highest rates of open defecation.

Phase one of the mission focused on rapid infrastructure deployment, resulting in the construction of approximately 90 million toilets by 2019. This effort was supported by a $28 billion total budget, with the government providing a ₹12,000 incentive per rural household. To ensure transparency, every toilet was geotagged and tracked via an integrated management system. By January 2020, the government reported that 36 states and union territories, along with over 603,175 villages, had achieved Open Defecation Free status.

Despite these metrics, the program faced criticism for its reliance on coercive tactics, such as threatening to withdraw government benefits from those who continued to defecate in the open. Critics argue that while the mission succeeded in building toilets, it often neglected the necessary behavioral education and the maintenance of sanitation infrastructure. In some regions, usage lagged behind construction, highlighting the difficulty of shifting social norms. Phase two, running from 2020 to 2025, now aims to sustain these gains by focusing on solid and liquid waste management and improving the lives of sanitation workers.

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