UNICEF report says Swachh Bharat Mission leads to decrease in groundwater contamination in India

Guwahati: A recent study published by the UNICEF reports that the Swachh Bharat Mission has done much good to India and its people as it has helped in reducing groundwater contamination to a much commendable level. The Swachh Bharat Mission was a pet scheme of Prime Minister Narendra Modi which he had started in his first term as the PM. The far-sightedness of the scheme has thus, started showing its fruits.

As per the report, the soil contamination is found to be 1.13 times more likely in non-ODF villages as compared to ODF villages. As the Prime Minister had made it mandatory for the nation and its people to follow the sanitation system and go free of open-defecation, there are several such states and its villages which are now free from the threat of groundwater contamination. In contrary to this, the three states Bihar, Odisha and West Bengal, which are not yet free from Open Defecation, the groundwater samples collected from these suggest that it is 11.25 times more likely to have contamination with faecal matters in comparison to the ones that are open defecation free.

In fact, not only the groundwater contamination, there is a threat to food contamination as well in those particular villages which are non-open defecation free. The report says that the non-ODF villages are 1.48 times more likely to have food contamination and 2.68 times more likely to have household drinking water contamination in comparison to ODF villages.

UNICEF released these two reports on the occasion of the World Environment Day. The good thing is that the political will of the Modi government is highly lauded by the agency for adopting the Swachh Bharat Scheme which is doing much good to the country. Notably, Prime Minister Modi, in his first Independence day speech during his first term, had mentioned about the need for sanitation along with the need to build toilets. Another study report published by World Health Organization had stated it in 2018 that it would lead to saving 3 lakh lives annually once the goal of 100% ODF is achieved.

Also read: Awareness campaign on Swachh Bharat Mission held in Lakhimpur