Budget 2020: Govt allocates Rs 12,300 crore for Swachh Bharat; aims for open defecation free country

In the Union Budget for the financial year 20-21, the Finance Minister announced that the total allocation proposed for Swachh Bharat Mission is Rs 12,300 crore. #SwachhBharatAbhiyan or #CleanIndiaMission is a nation-wide campaign introduced by PM Narendra Modi that aims to clean the streets, roads and infrastructure of cities towns, urban and rural cities and area in India. While the mission has been one of the main focus of the Indian government, the budget allocated for FY21 is less than the budget allocation of Rs 12,644 crore in FY20.  In fact, the allocation for the mission in last year’s budget was 31 per cent less from Rs 19,427 allocated by the government in the FY 2018-19.

Nirmala Sitharaman further stressed that the government is “committed to making India Open Defecation Free (#ODF) plus in order to sustain ODF behaviour and to ensure no one is left behind.” The government wants to ensure 100 per cent disposal of liquid waste. It also intends to work on faecal sludge management and the reuse of wastewater. It further aims to focus on faecal sludge management (#FSM), especially in rural areas. Under the Swachh Bharat Mission (Grameen), the government had earlier declared that over 5,66,248 villages (94.27 per cent of all villages) in India are open defecation-free. According to the National Annual Rural Sanitation Survey (NARSS) 2017-18, rural toilet usage in India had reached 93.4 per cent. The team at NARSS had visited over 90,000 households across more than 6,000 villages before releasing their findings.

REF- Financial Express