According to the ministry, the second phase of the Swachh Bharat Mission-Grameen (SBM-G) is to appropriately manage all types of waste.
New Delhi: The Centre’s Open Defecation Free Plus drive, under the flagship programme Swachh Bharat Mission Grameen (SBM-G), recorded a milestone of 1,01,462 villages declaring themselves as ODF Plus.
“These villages are sustaining their ODF status and have systems in place for managing solid and or liquid waste and they would continue on their sanitation journey as they work towards making their villages cleaner, greener and healthier,” said a press statement issued by the Ministry of Jal Shakti.
The country came together in the world’s largest behaviour change campaign and achieved its aim, and on October 2, 2019, 11 years ahead of the SDG-6 target set by the United Nations, rural India became open defecation free. “However, this was not the end of the mission, it laid the foundation to take on a much more challenging, yet necessary task; the need to ensure sampoorn swachhata (complete cleanliness), to make the country’s villages ODF Plus,” the statement added.
According to the ministry, the second phase of the Swachh Bharat Mission-Grameen (SBM-G) is to appropriately manage all types of waste that will not only make our villages clean but also creating avenues for generating incomes for rural households and creating new livelihood opportunities, while fulfilling the requirements of the Sustainable Development Goals. “The SBM-G reinforces the government’s commitment to promote hygiene and safe sanitation and thereby improve the quality of life of its citizens,” the statement said.
“In the ODF Plus-Aspiring category there are 54,734 villages in which all households and institutions besides having access to sanitation through individual household latrines, have arrangements for either SWM or LWM; those in ODF Plus – Rising are 17,121 villages which have arrangements for both LWM and SWM in addition to the criteria in Aspiring. Those that are declared ODF Plus-Model are 29,607 villages which have all the above and where IEC messages are prominently disseminated and displayed,” the ministry further said.
The top five performing states, according to the ministry, are Telangana, Tamil Nadu, Odisha, Uttar Pradesh and Himachal Pradesh where maximum number of villages have been declared as ODF Plus.
