Cleaning India: Examining Sanitation Issues in an Urban Slum

Open defecation is a common facet within poor communities throughout India. The Indian government began a program in 2014 with the goal to create an “Open Defecation Free” India by 2019. This program, under the “Swachh Bharat (Clean India) Mission” has been created and heavily promoted by the central government under Prime Minister Modi. India has the highest rate of malnutrition in the world, and open defecation is a key factor that aids this epidemic. Under Swachh Bharat, households without toilets are eligible to receive ₹12,000 (rupees) (the equivalent of approximately one hundred and eighty USD) as an incentive to construct a toilet. In collaboration with the Center for Policy Research, we investigated the implementation of Swachh Bharat within Kalakar Basti. Kalakar Basti is a slum located in the city of Jaipur, which is the capital of the state of Rajasthan in northern India. In Kalakar Basti,  most people are below the poverty line and a significant portion cannot afford to construct toilets. These families have no option other than to defecate in the street or in a nearby field, a practice which is both unhygienic and dangerous—especially for women. We surveyed each family accepted for this scheme in order to determine if they received any money, and to evaluate the status of their constructed toilet. We found several flaws within the implementation of Swachh Bharat in Kalakar Basti. Most significantly, we found that not a single applicant received the second installment, despite spending upwards of ₹20,000 on building a functional toilet. Through various interviews and ethnographic research within the basti we set out to discover why this issue was occurring for so many applicants. We found that although the ideology of the government scheme “Swachh Bharat (Clean India) Mission” is reputable, outside forces such as a time limitation, possible corruption, and digital reliance hinder the results of the scheme immeasurably.