India has made progress on an unprecedented scale with respect to access to water and sanitation. Now to ensure the sustained usage of toilets along with hygiene practices, is the way forward. As the goal of access to safe sanitation has already been significantly realized, it is now important to promote behavioral change towards toilet usage.
India has only 4% of the world’s freshwater resources whereas it’s home to 1.3 billion people. So it’s still a struggle for a large part of the population to get access to clean water. Lack of piped water supply and the scarcity of potable water add to the problem. However, the ambitious Jal Jeevan Mission programme, launched in 2019, aims to provide piped drinking water to every rural household by 2024.
Under this mission over 8.45 crore or 44% of the total 19.22 crore rural households have been provided with piped water connections. Six states and Union Territories— Goa, Telangana, Haryana, Dadra and Nagar Haveli, Andaman and Nicobar Islands and Puducherry— have achieved 100% coverage of tap water connection for rural households.
In terms of Sanitation, on October 2, 2019 rural India was declared open defecation free with over 11 crore toilets built covering more than 6 lakh villages in 699 districts of the country. Where toilets exist, they need proper maintenance with appropriate waste management practices.
The role of the sanitary worker becomes prominent to create an enabling environment for safe return to schools for pupils and particularly girls. But pandemic affected these hygiene workers the most. These public health and safety workers were unprotected, unappreciated and ignored. There are over five million sanitation workers in India collecting waste from our households, cleaning our streets and public toilets, sewer lines and septic tanks.
The ‘swachhta’ that we witness on the ground today, be it cleaner roads, regular waste collection or well-maintained public toilets, is largely a result of the efforts of these workers engaged solely in the business of cleanliness.
we often confuse toilets with sanitation. But toilets are mere repositories to receive waste; when we flush, the waste flows into a piped drain, which could be either connected or not, to a sewage treatment plant (STP).
Along with the poor solid / liquid waste management, we also struggle to contain plastic waste management, which has become a menace by clogging drains resulting in severe floods, especially in urban spaces.
Prioritising investment and action to solve our faecal sludge along with plastic waste management is the need of the hour.
Urban Sanitation Programme in India 