• The Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation launched a third party verification survey report to take stock of the progress already made by the Mission in rural India.
• The Quality Council of India (QCI) has conducted a transparent third-party assessment of the present status of rural sanitation in all States and UTs, called Swachh Survekshan Gramin 2017.

Survey Highlights:

• Kerala and Haryana have topped the survey.
• Northeastern States of Sikkim, Manipur and Nagaland have performed well with 95% rural households covered by toilets. And so were the Himalayan States of Himachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand with over 90% toilet coverage of the rural houses.
• Bihar, Jharkhand, UP and Odisha were among the worst performers in terms of rural sanitation.
• In Bihar, only 30% of the rural households had access to toilets while Uttar Pradesh was marginally better at 37%.
• Under the Swachh Survekshan Gramin 2017, QCI surveyed 1.4 lakh rural households across 4626 villages, and found the overall toilet coverage to be 62.45%.
• At the time of the survey, i.e. May-June 2017, the Swachh Bharat Mission (Gramin) MIS reported the coverage to be 63.73%.
• The survey also observed that 91.29% of the people having access to a toilet.
• To encourage States and districts to improve their Sanitation coverage and Solid Liquid Waste Management (SLWM), the ministry will also begin ranking all districts in India based on the data available on the SBM-G IMIS quarterly.
• The ranking will be done based on parameters of Performance, Sustainability and Transparency, and the first ranking will be announced on 2nd October, 2017 for the quarter July-September 2017.
• To instil healthy competition amongst districts, they will also be given awards based on this ranking on a quarterly basis.
• The formula for calculating these rankings will be: Total score (100) = Performance (50) + Sustainability (25) + Transparency (25)

Swachh Bharat Abhiyan

• Swachh Bharat Abhiyan is a campaign by the GOI to clean the streets, roads and infrastructure of the country’s 4,041 statutory cities and towns. It includes ambassadors and activities such as run, national real-time monitoring or spread of updated NGOs practices.
• The campaign was officially launched on 2 October 2014 at Rajghat, New Delhi, by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. It is India’s largest ever cleanliness drive with 3 million government employees, and especially school and college students from all parts of India, participating in the campaign.
• The objectives of Swachh Bharat are to reduce or eliminate open defecation through the construction of individual, cluster and community toilets. The Swachh Bharat mission will also make an initiative of establishing an accountable mechanism of monitoring latrine use.The government is aiming to achieve an Open-Defecation Free (ODF) India by 2 October 2019, the 150th anniversary of the birth of Mahatma Gandhi, by constructing 12 million toilets in rural India, at a projected cost of ₹1.96 lakh crore.
• Over 4.54 crore household toilets have been constructed since the launch of the Swachh Bharat Mission Gramin. 2,20,104 villages, 160 districts and 5 States declared ODF.Sanitation Coverage has increased from 39% in October 2016 to 66% in August 2017.

Quality Council of India

• Quality Council of India (QCI) was set up in 1997 jointly by the Government of India and the Indian Industry represented by the three premier industry associations i.e. Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India (ASSOCHAM), Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) and Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI), to establish and operate national accreditation structure and promote quality through National Quality Campaign.
• The Department of Industrial Policy & Promotion, Ministry of Commerce & Industry, is the nodal ministry for QCI.

Source:TH & PIB