The Challenge of Sanitation in India : An assessment of Clean India Mission in the Gram Panchayat of Badkulla I and II, West Bengal, India

Sanitation continues to represent one of the most significant problems threatening the world population. In this scenario, India still encounters several difficulties in guaranteeing generalized access to adequate sanitation and, for this reason, in 2014, Clean India Mission was launched. In order to provide an assessment of the campaign, semi-qualitative interviews were carried out with two different target groups – Gram Panchayat representatives and household heads – in the rural area surrounding the Gram Panchayat of Badkulla I and II. The analysis of the data collected reported that the Gram Panchayat representatives had a central and active role in the promotion, realization and monitoring of the guidelines of Swachh Bharat Abhiyan program. However, the SBA implementation did not wholly follow the campaign guidelines, and it did not appear totally in line with what suggested by the community-led approach. Moreover, the different initiatives included in the campaign presented some problematics, such as difficulties in accessing the campaign incentives, low-quality construction of the latrines, uneven spread of the communication activities and low sustainability of the campaign results. At the same time, the community members seemed more aware of the importance of better sanitation standards but generally unsatisfied with the campaign performance. The assessment of the campaign highlighted the significant influence that context and actors involved played in the campaign realization and how the missing focus on critical aspects, such as prioritizing the numbers of toilets over their quality, profoundly affected the campaign results and sustainability over time. A future sanitation campaign should be focusing on addressing the shortcomings of Swachh Bharat Abhiyan by also taking into consideration the potential challenges represented by financial constraints, continuous change in households’ structure, local social norms and climatic conditions