Nirmal Bharat Abhiyan

Nirmal Bharat Abhiyan was earlier known as Total Sanitation Campaign (TSC). Under this programme, Projects have been launched in the entire rural India covering 607 Districts in 30 States/Uts.

Nirmal Bharat Abhiyan (NBA) envisages covering the entire community for saturated outcomes with a view to create Nirmal Gram Panchayats with following priorities:

• Provision of Individual Household Latrine (IHHL) of both Below Poverty Line (BPL) and Identified Above Poverty Line (APL) households within a Gram Panchayat (GP). For this, Gram Panchayats where all habitations have access to water to be taken up. Priority may be given to Gram Panchayats having functional piped water supply.
• Provision of sanitation facilities in Government Schools and Anganwadis in Government buildings within these GPs.
• Solid and Liquid Waste Management (SLWM) for proposed and existing Nirmal Grams.
• Extensive capacity building of the stake holders like Panchayati Raj Institutions (PRIs), Village Water and Sanitation Committees (VWSCs) and field functionaries for sustainable sanitation.
• Appropriate convergence with MNREGS with unskilled man-days and skilled man-days.

Objectives

The main objectives of the NBA are as under:

• Bring about an improvement in the general quality of life in the rural areas.
• Accelerate sanitation coverage in rural areas to achieve the vision of Nirmal Bharat by 2022 with all gram Panchayats in the country attaining Nirmal status.
  
• Motivate communities and Panchayati Raj Institutions promoting sustainable sanitation facilities through awareness creation and health education.
• To cover the remaining schools not covered under Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) and Anganwadi Centres in the rural areas with proper sanitation facilities and undertake proactive promotion of hygiene education and sanitary habits among students.
  
• Encourage cost effective and appropriate technologies for ecologically safe and sustainable sanitation.
• Develop community managed environmental sanitation systems focusing on solid & liquid waste management for overall cleanliness in the rural areas.

Strategy

The strategy is to transform rural India into ‘Nirmal Bharat’ by adopting the ‘community led’ and ‘people centered’ strategies and community saturation approach. A “demand driven approach” is to be continued with emphasis on awareness creation and demand generation for sanitary facilities in houses, schools and for cleaner environment. Alternate delivery mechanisms would be adopted to meet the community needs. The provision of incentives for individual household latrine units to the poorest of the poor households has been widened to cover the other needy households too so as to attain community outcomes. Availability of water in the Gram Panchayat shall be an important factor for sustaining sanitation facilities created. Rural School Sanitation remains a major component and an entry point for wider acceptance of sanitation by the rural people. Wider technology options are being provided to meet the customer preferences and location- specific needs. Intensive IEC Campaign is the corner stone of the programme involving Panchayati Raj Institutions, Co-operatives, ASHA, Anganwadi workers, Women Groups, Self Help Groups, NGOs etc. A roadmap for engagement of corporate houses is being introduced. More transparent system involving social audit and active people’s participation in the implementation process of NBA is being introduced. Convergence with MNREGS shall also be important to facilitate the rural households with fund availability for creating their own sanitation facilities.

Implementation

For implementation of this scheme, the Gram Panchayat is the base unit. A project proposal that emanates from a district is scrutinized and consolidated by the State Government and transmitted to the Government of India (Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation) as a State Plan. NBA is to be implemented in phases with start-up activities. Funds are to be made available for preliminary IEC work. The physical implementation gets oriented towards satisfying the felt-needs, wherein individual households choose from a menu of options for their household latrines. The built-in flexibility in the menu of options gives the poor and the disadvantaged families’ opportunity for subsequent upgradation depending upon their requirements and financial position. In the “campaign approach”, a synergistic interaction between the Government agencies and other stakeholders is essential. To bring about the desired behavioural changes for relevant sanitary practices, intensive IEC and advocacy, with participation of NGOs/Panchayati Raj Institutions/resource organizations is envisaged.

NBA will be implemented with a district as the project. The States/UTs are expected to prepare/revise NBA Projects for all the districts, consolidate at State level as State Plan and submit before the Government of India.

Funds

A provision of ` 4260 crore has been made for Nirmal Bharat Abhiyan in Union Budget 2013-14 including ` 426 crore for North-Eastern Region and Sikkim for the year 2013-14

Nirmal Gram Puraskar

The “Nirmal Gram Puraskar” “Clean Village Award” was started in 2005 under Total Sanitation Campaign (TSC) to honor, felicitate and encourage those Panchayati Raj Institutions (PRIs) which have achieved full sanitation coverage in their area of operation and become Open Defecation Free and clean villages, for making TSC into a mass movement.

A “Nirmal Gram” is an “Open Defecation Free” village where all houses, Schools and Anganwadis having sanitary toilets and awareness amongst community on the importance of maintaining personal and community hygiene and clean environment.

As per the available information, Sikkim has been the first Nirmal State in the country having achieved full sanitation coverage.

The concept of Nirmal Gram Puraskar has been acclaimed internationally as a unique tool of social engineering and community mobilization and has helped a difficult program like rural sanitation to pick up. After TSC was launched in 1999, average coverage between 2001 to 2004 rose to 3% annually.