LEAD STORY
community.” The underlying goal was to metamorphose a
government program into a People’s Movement. This has led
to unprecedented success for SBM in the last four years. The
sanitation coverage across the country has shot up from 38
percent in 2014 to over 90 percent in 2018. The usage rates
of these toilets, as corroborated by independent agencies has
been over 90 percent as well.
The United Nations in 2015 came up with Resolution
70/1 which defi ned the “Sustainable Development Goals
(SDGs)”, a set of 17 targets encompassing major social
and economic development issues that have to be met by
2030. Goal 6 of SDG talks about access to Clean Water and
Sanitation for all. In 2014, India housed more than half the
world’s population defecating in the open. Four years hence,
the situation has changed remarkably. If the pace of progress
remains constant, India will achieve one of the major targets
of the SDGs, a decade before the deadline. In a country where
every person has a notoriously diff erent defi nition of time
then his neighbour, achieving a target before deadline is an
indubitable sign of progress.
Safe sanitation facilities with solid and liquid waste
management is related to atleast 14 other SDGs. There are
still millions of people in India, in Asia, Africa, and Latin
America with lack of proper access to sanitation and other
basic necessities. Welfare programs in India and across the
world have been mired by leakages and lack of transparency.
But in case of SBM, the government has strived to bring
together all the stake-holders through approaches like
Rural Sanitary Marts, Social Entrepreneurship Models,
Hackathons, Crowdsourcing activities, CSR etc. to ensure
the success of the program. There have been other countries
where sanitations programs have achieved success but when
it succeeds in India it gives hope to a lot of people across
the world who aren’t fortunate enough with endowments. In
India, oft a messy democracy, more than 50 percent of the
population still lives below $2 a day, struggling to meet their
quotidian needs and the state-run programs have a reputation
of fl agrantly fl oundering. But the success of SBM could set a
new benchmark and lead to a paradigm shift in approaches of
governments towards other socio-economic issues. India could
play a cardinal role in defi ning the success of Agenda 2030.
Gandhi: An Exercise in Soft Power
India has been a superpower in the making for decades
now. It is one of the fastest growing economies with a
substantial military might but it also has a copious set of
socio-cultural and economic concerns. If India were to truly
realise her position as a global leader, it will have to exercise
its soft power in a fi rmer way. Soft power, a term coined by
Harvard Academician Joseph Nye, is the power of attraction,
one that India off ers in abundance. It is a millennia old land
which has harboured all the religions of the world, been a
canvas for all the artists, a stage for all the performers, a
question for all the philosophers and an inspiration for all the
writers. It is a land of stories and Gandhi has been, perhaps,
its greatest story-teller.
Gandhi has been India’s biggest export since
independence. The two pillars of Gandhian Principles,
Truth and Non-Violence have inspired great leaders across
the world from the likes of Martin Kuther King Jr, to Nelson
Madela to Aung San Su Kyi to take up moral fi ghts and lead
their countries towards a better future. Gandhi’s insistence
on self-reliance inspired people like Abdul Hameid to lay
the foundations of Pharma industry in India through Cipla.
Today, India is the world-leader in manufacture of generic
drugs which has been a boon for the poor across the world
and have ushered in an era of improved life-expectancy
in some of the poorest parts of the world. The Gandhian
principle of decentralization of political power led to the
creation of Panchayati Raj Institutions in India and its success
is an illustration of the power of participatory democracy.
The Swachh Bharat Mission, a program envisaged on the
ideals of Gandhi, and one implemented with a Gandhian
approach emblematizes the new way of implementation of
social welfare schemes across the world. The success of the
sanitation revolution in India is a tribute to the Gandhian
approach towards problem-solving.
As India celebrates 150 years of Mahatma Gandhi, the
International Sanitation Convention from 29th September to
2nd October 2018 showed the indelible mark Gandhi has left
in this world. The proliferation of Gandhian philosophy in
all walks of life from academia to media to politics to music
across the world is the greatest exercise in India’s Soft Power
and perhaps the route towards becoming a Superpower.
References:
• https://www.mkgandhi.org/articles/cleanliness-next-to-
godliness.html
• https://www.mkgandhi.org/articles/the-mahatmas-
superpower.html
• https://www.mkgandhi.org/articles/gandhian-thoughts-
about-cleanliness.html
• http://www.gandhi-manibhavan.org/gandhiphilosophy/
* The author is a Fellow at Tata Trusts. He is currently
working with Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation,
Govt. of India and Department of Panchayati Raj and
Drinking Water, Government of Odisha on the implementation
and monitoring of Swachh Bharat Mission (Gramin) in
Odisha.
Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary Diplomatist • Vol 6 • Issue 10 • Oct-Nov 2018, Noida • 35