‘CLEAN India’, this is one of the slogans given by Prime Minister Modi in his much acclaimed speech on Independence Day. Modi announced that by 2019 all habitations will have safe drinking water and each school will have a toilet and all villages will have latrines for women. The basic infrastructure of 500 small towns will be upgraded. While the repeated announcement of a sanitation drive is always welcome, the launching of a total sanitation and Clean India Campaign is not unique to ‘Modi’s vision’. Rather, the UPA government had launched an extensive Total Sanitation Campaign and National Rural Drinking Water Mission. On the other side, the demand for right to basic amenities like toilets, especially women’s toilets in schools and safe drinking water has been an integral part of the democratic struggle for a long time. Is the announcement by Modi an attempt to hijack an existing campaign or facilitate the penetration of corporate Hindutva? It is symbolically significant that the drive is to begin on October 2, 2014 from Varanasi, a place which elected Modi and which will be the centre piece of the Clean Ganga Campaign. For Modi, the drive to ‘Clean India’ is a mission to serve the ‘mother earth’ and induce tourists and foreign investment. In this context there are reports that the current Clean India Campaign is a part of a multi-million dollar project which will provide opportunities for foreign companies to use clean technology for water and sanitation. But the question is whether this strategy can be successful in meeting the target and ensuring continuous supply of safe drinking water and maintenance of sanitation services and infrastructure. 

INSUFFICIENT

INFRASTRUCTURE

In the past, the UPA government started the Nirmal Bharat Abhiyan and the Rajiv Gandhi Rural Drinking Water Mission to expand basic infrastructural facilities. These schemes were meant to construct toilets in households and schools and provide safe drinking water in all habitations. The impact of  these initiatives can be assessed through an analysis of the recent National Sample Survey Report on Drinking Water, Sanitation, Hygiene and Housing Conditions in India, 2012 (Report Number 556). According to the data 88.5 percent of households in the rural and 95.3 percent of the households in urban India had access to ‘improved’ sources of drinking water. The definition of improved sources includes ‘bottled water’, piped tap water, borewells/tubewells, uncovered and covered wells and protected springs. Within this broad category, affordable and sufficient access to drinking water is dependent on the type of primary source a household depends on for their daily needs. The data shows that there have been some significant changes in pattern of dependence in the three years between 2009 (the last round where drinking water was surveyed) and 2012:

Table 1

Percentage Changes in Primary Source of Drinking Water in Some States, 2009-2012

Calculated from NSSO Report Number 556 of 2012, and  NSSO Report Number: 535 of 2009. Estimate Decadal Growth Rate is calculated from Census 2011.

The table above shows that the growth of ‘improved water infrastructure’ has not kept pace with the growing population in different states. Further there has been a rising dependence on bottled water for drinking in the three years under consideration. This clearly indicates that the commodification of water is taking place particularly in undivided Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu. Further there is hardly any improvement in the supply of tapped water. But this is not a uniform picture as there seems to be a difference between rural and urban areas:

Table 2.

Percentage Changes in Primary Source of Drinking Water in Some States, 2009-2012

Calculated from NSSO Report Number 556 of 2012, and  NSSO Report Number: 535 of 2009.

The table shows that the dependence on bottled drinking water is more on the rise in urban areas, it has also made a significant appearance in rural regions of almost all states. Undivided Andhra Pradesh stands out as a case in point where there is a sharp rise in dependence on bottled water in both urban and rural regions. In Tamil Nadu this dependence is slightly higher in rural areas than urban regions. But in overall terms there has been a decline in piped drinking water from taps a little more than 5 percent in the urban regions. By the same measure the drinking water supply through taps in rural areas is nominal in its rise. In the much touted Gujarat Model too, rural water supply through taps has marginally increased by 2.3 percent where as the rural population rose by a higher percentage of 2.5 percent. At the same time the rise in dependence on bottled water kept pace with the rise with the dependence on tap water. At the same time the urban Gujarat offers a unique case of a place where all forms of formal water supply have declined and at least 5 percent of the people are dependent on unspecified ‘other sources of drinking water’ . This clearly shows that Gujarat is not a unique or desirable model for replication.

LACK OF

BASIC SANITATION

A similar story can be seen as far as access to bathrooms and toilets is concerned. The scenario of 2012 is described in Table 3.  

Table 3

  Percentage of People with No Access to Bathrooms or Latrines, 2012

Calculated from NSSO Report Number 556 of 2012

This table once again shows a clear rural-urban divide with the BJP ruled states of Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh leading the pack in terms of lack of access to bathing facilities. As far as lack of access to latrines is concerned in Gujarat, the NSSO report shows that in overall terms the number of households with no access to latrines has gone up by about 7.50 percent in three years between 2009-2012.

Within this rural urban divide, the sociological composition of the beneficiaries of the scheme is provided by the website of the ministry of drinking water and sanitation which is shown in the Table 4.

Table 4

Progress of Nirmal Bharat Abhiyan for Construction of Household Latrines as on July 2014  (in terms of Percentage)

Data accessed from website of Nirmal Bharat Abhiyan on August 15, 2014.

Though in overall terms, the gap between APL and BPL households does not seem high, the balance is in favour of the APL in Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, West Bengal and Haryana. But in Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh, the states report that the BPL has benefitted more than APL thus showing the targeted nature of the scheme. In either case universal coverage is a problem that has to be dealt with. The Modi government needs to get down to the basics and clarify: are they for universal coverage or targetted schemes. Within universal coverage how much will be public investment and how much corporate? Mere rhetorical references lack substance and do not deal with the root causes of the failures of existing schemes.

The selling point of Modi’s speech was ‘a toilet in every school in one year’. It is clear from the data provided by the ministry that as of July 2014 only 7.06 percent of the schools were without toilets and 10 per cent of the schools were without water. In contrast the situation in anganwadis is much worse, where about one third of the centres had no toilets and about 40 percent no water. In this situation one wonders why Modi made toilets in schools and not anganwadis a big issue in his speech. It can be safely stated that the speech had less to do with an evaluation of the existing situation and more to do with politically correct populist rhetoric. It may well be that the Mahatma Gandhi Clean India Programme to be launched by the government is high on political atmospherics to discredit existing social welfare schemes and take credit for their limited achievements. This strategy may also make way for public private partnerships that will bring about fundamental structural changes in basic service delivery without addressing the real problems. The real challenge is to address the institutional problems in the maintenance and continuous supply of basic services and to prevent overuse of water by politically powerful players. This can only be done by stopping commodification of basic services through privatisation and increasing social control over the public sector service delivery institutions. Clearly the Modi government is not geared up and does not seem to understand this challenge.