“Over 5.5 Lakh Villages Are Open Defecation Free” Prime Minister Narendra
Mumbai: Over 5.5 lakh villages and 600 districts has been declared as defecation free (ODF) said Narendra Modi. Around 98 per cent of rural India is under the sanitation coverage with nine crore households being provided with latrines.
“On October 2, 2014, we started a memorable journey together to make our country clean and to get rid of open defecation. Because of the unequal support of the people of India, today India is moving towards liberation much before open defecation. Used to be.” The goal of October 2, 2019, so that we can pay tribute to Bapu on his 150th birth anniversary, “Modi said in his monthly radio speech in “Mann Ki Baat.”
More than 50 lakh toilets participated in December 2018 in ‘Clean Beautiful Toilet’ he said.
In competitions, people are making their toilets clean and colorful. Modi said that many pictures of such toilets from Kanyakumari to Kappur and Assam can be found on social media. The Prime Minister urged all the Sarpanches and village heads to use the #MylzatGhar on social media to share their beautiful “Toilets with their photos” with their respective panchayats to lead this expedition.
Open Defecation (ODF) is the human practice of defecating outside (in the open environment) rather than into a toilet. People may choose fields, bushes, forests, ditches, streets, canals or other open space for defecation. They do so because either they do not have a toilet readily accessible or due to traditional cultural practices.The practice is common where sanitation infrastructure and services are not available. Even if toilets are available, behavior change efforts may still be needed to promote the use of toilets. The term “open defecation free” (ODF) is used to describe communities that have shifted to using a toilet instead of open defecation.
The Government of India claims that the situation has been improving rapidly since 2015, mainly due to the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan campaign. According to Government of India’s October 2018 estimate, only 5% of the total population have no access to toilets and are still doing open defecation. As of September 2018, around 93 percent of the rural population had access to proper sanitation, with the number of people defecating in the open reduced to 150 million, down from 550 million in 2014.
The goal is to declare India open defecation free (ODF) before 2 October 2019, but the government of India is approaching the initiative much faster and India is likely to achieve ODF status before the deadline.
