Rural Sanitation Strategy launched by Ministry of Jal Shakti in September 2019 relates to which of the following periods ?

Question

UnlockIAS · Accepted Answer

Correct — B, 2019-2029. The document released by the Department of Drinking Water and Sanitation, Ministry of Jal Shakti, in September 2019 is titled the 10-Year Rural Sanitation Strategy (2019-2029). Its job is to protect and build on what Swachh Bharat Mission-Grameen had achieved — more than ten crore rural household toilets since 2 October 2014 — by sustaining the behaviour change behind open-defecation-free (ODF) status and taking villages to 'ODF Plus', where every household keeps using a toilet and the village also manages its solid and liquid waste. The clue is in the title: it is a ten-year strategy, so the period must end in 2029.

Why the other options are wrong — (a) A sixteen-year horizon that matches no rural sanitation document. The strategy is explicitly a ten-year one, and the global sanitation benchmark most often quoted alongside it — Sustainable Development Goal 6 — runs to 2030, not 2035.  (c) A three-year window. Several government targets were pegged to 2022 (the 75th year of independence), which makes this tempting, but the Rural Sanitation Strategy is not one of them.  (d) A five-year window matching a Finance Commission or plan cycle, not this strategy. The follow-on Swachh Bharat Mission-Grameen Phase II runs on a five-year design, but the Strategy itself covers ten years.

Concept: Indian rural sanitation policy has moved in distinct phases: the Central Rural Sanitation Programme (1986), the Total Sanitation Campaign (1999), Nirmal Bharat Abhiyan (2012) and finally Swachh Bharat Mission-Grameen from 2 October 2014. Rural India was declared open-defecation-free on 2 October 2019, which changed the policy problem from construction to sustenance. The 10-Year Rural Sanitation Strategy (2019-2029) is the answer to that new problem: keep people using the toilets that were built, and add solid and liquid waste management so a village becomes 'ODF Plus'. The follow-on SBM-Grameen Phase II carries the same ODF Plus agenda into implementation.

State PCS 2019 Q5 — Current Affairs PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2019 Q5 — Current Affairs PYQ with Answer