Swachh Bharat Mission (Urban) Towards Cleaning India: A Policy Perspective

The United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals have emphasized on the achievement of universal and equitable access to safe and affordable drinking water and adequate and equitable sanitation and hygiene for all 1(Box 1). India has been able to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in the water sector, but it has been lagging in the sanitation sector. According to the recently launched Joint Monitoring Programme (JMP)2 update (2015), about 564 million people practice open defecation in India out of 946 million open defecators of the world. As of 2015, about 10 percent of urban population of 419 million resort to open defecation (OD) in India. 3 As India becomes more urbanized, issues of discharge of sewage will increase. By the year 2050, the number of people living in Indian cities is expected to be about 840 million. In order to accommodate this ever increasing.