Swachh Bharat Mission of building toilets far behind target

#SwachhBharatMission #NarendraModi #opentoilets In spite of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s call for a Swachh Bharat and his desire to see an India free of the woes of people defecating in open spaces due to non-availability of toilet facilities, the progress is not as expected.
The government has tried its best to influence and change the mindset of the masses through TV ads featuring actress Vidya Balan. The intention is to assign highest priority to build toilets in every rural household, school and anganwadis under its flagship Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM).
However, the achievement is reportedly dismal against the target set for this financial year and, from the looks of it, the possibilities of achieving the target within next four months of this fiscal appears to be an impossible task.
Just for records - between April and December, it was possible to construct only 24.79 lakh individual household toilets in villages – the target as per the annual implementation plan (AIP) was to build 1.25 crore such units. As to building school toilets, the situation is no better. Regarding constructing community toilets, the achievement is only 5.33%.
The states that have not come up to expectations, as reported by the drinking water and sanitation department, are Punjab, Bihar, Odisha, Chhattisgarh, Andhra Pradesh and Telangana – these are below the national average of 19.8%.
Other states that have miserably failed to meet the target of building community sanitary complexes are Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Bihar, West Bengal and Odisha – they have performed poorly.
This works out to 13 states out of the 29 states or less than 50% in India who have failed to take suitable actions to implement the Swachh Bharat Mission.