The Making of an Open Defecation-Free Village: Social Reality of the Swachh Bharat Mission in Tribal Rajasthan

Abstract

Launched in 2014, the Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM) is a flagship programme of the Indian government. In 2018–2019, the official SBM figures claimed that 99.08 per cent of Indian households used toilets, making this the most successful programme in India’s developmental history. This article narrates how the SBM achieved statistical success but failed in promoting toilet use. It is based on fieldwork conducted in Kanpur Gram Panchayat situated in Udaipur, Rajasthan. The field data show that the officials pressured the panchayat functionaries to construct toilets hastily and declared villages as open defecation free (ODF) to achieve statistical goals. This race to get an ODF village status did not do much good at the grassroots level because the constructed toilets remained incomplete or dysfunctional due to scarcity and non-availability of water. In reality, it was found that the toilets were being used to store firewood, dung cakes, and agricultural implements. In the fast urbanising and industrialising landscape of southern Rajasthan, the success of sustainable sanitation infrastructure largely depends on empowering scheduled tribes and flattening structural inequalities.