Limited community led approach in implementation of the Clean India Programme in urban areas

It has been more than three years since Clean India Programme, locally called Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM) with one of ambitious objective to make the Country open defecation free by 2019. The Paper is based on working experience on sanitation in Bhopal City of Madhya Pradesh and it attempts to assess the Programme on roles of urban poor community, in planning, accessing and monitoring of sanitation services being provided. It argues that despite political will at the national level, whole programme with a dead line has become a target driven toilet construction programme compromising strategy, adequate quality, monitoring and most importantly community engagement. In-fact, for last three months a race has begun to make city declared as open defecation free using all fair and foul means. It emphasizes that despite City demonstrating successful models of community led infrastructure planned and developed in slums under different bilateral agencies supported programme, the learning has not been replicated