Mahatma Gandhi was such a great leader and social reformer of the country whom the country will always remember. He has always been an equalizer and campaigner for cleanliness. The prime minister of India Mr. Narendra Modi started working on making his dream come true.
On the 145th birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi, he launched a cleanliness campaign all over India. It was named as ‘Swachh Bharat Abhiyan’. The mission aimed to make India completely open defecation free by 2019, the 150th birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi. The government wanted to achieve it by providing toilets to every household in rural and urban India.
By the end of 2014, the government proposed to make 31.83 lakh toilets in rural India. By the middle of the year 2015, the Sikkim state was declared completely open defecation free. By the year 2016, the government also launched two sub-programmes, cleanliness fortnight and Namami Gange. Namami Gange was to make the Ganga River completely clean.
Sanitation Action Plan, SwachhtaSakhi, and other programmes were launched in the upcoming years. Since the applicability of the mission was widened, the government increased its budget also. The Swachh Bharat Abhiyan has become now a mass movement, and India is leading towards becoming completely open defecation free.