Swach Bharat Diwas

In 2017, the Government is celebrating Gandhi Jayanti - October 2 as Swach Bharat Diwas. Government is also celebrating September 15, 2017 to October 2, 2017 for the Swachhata Hi Sewa campaign to mark the third anniversary of the Swachh Bharat Mission to provide an impetus to the largest sanitation campaign of India.

“A clean India would be the best tribute India could pay to Mahatma Gandhi on his 150 birth anniversary in 2019,” said Shri Narendra Modi as he launched the Swachh Bharat Mission at Rajpath in New Delhi.

On 2nd October 2014, Swachh Bharat Mission was launched throughout length and breadth of the country as a national movement. While leading the mass movement for cleanliness, the Prime Minister exhorted people to fulfil Mahatma Gandhi’s dream of a clean and hygienic India. Shri Narendra Modi himself initiated the cleanliness drive at Mandir Marg Police Station.

The Swachh Sarvekshan conducted in several States on the impact of the Swachh Bharat Mission brought forth several success stories in 3 years of implementation – complete behavioral changes in people to keep villages clean and use toilets, people selling family jewels to construct household toilets, vanar senas of children blowing whistles and accosting people at 5 am to prevent open defacation and significant improvement in school enrolment through the Swachh Bharat Mission.

The Swachh Bharat Mission has become a massive peoples movement. Public Sanitation has been accorded significant importance in Gandhi’s life in South Africa. In his book “My Experiments with Truth” Gandhi writes, plague broke out in Bombay in 1897 and there was panic all around. Gandhi offered his services to the State in the sanitation department. Gandhi laid special emphasis on inspection of latrines and carrying out improvements.

In his inspections of untouchables’ quarters Gandhi found that they were beautifully smeared with cow dung and the few pots and pans were clean and shining. There was no fear of an outbreak in those quarters. Gandhi further notes that sanitation was a difficult affair in penetrating Indian villages. The people were not ready to do their own scavenging. Gandhian volunteers concentrated their energies on making villages ideally clean, they swept the roads and the courtyards, cleaned out the wells, filled the pools and persuaded the villagers to raise volunteers from amongst themselves.