The Swachh Bharat campaign, which was established to improve the cleanliness of the entire country, has now reached its third anniversary since it was launched on October 2nd, 2014. However, despite the mission has been active for three years, there is still much work to be done on ensuring cleanliness around India.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has come out and spoken about the need for more progress in this mission. In order for the mission to be successful, Modi said, not even a thousand Ghandis, a lakh Modis, and all of the Chief Ministers could make the mission work without the support of India’s large and growing population.

Even three years later, the targets for the mission are still daunting to many, but Modi enforced that no obstacles should deter the effort of this campaign.

Avoiding the obstacles will not solve the problem at hand, but hard work over a long period of time will eventually complete the mission.

He specifically mentioned the pain felt by women who lack toilets where they live. Men are typically forgetful of the difficulties that women face in urinating without a toilet available, but Modi said that this problem must be changed and that men should be more aware of the needs of women.

Additionally, Modi asked his critics not to politicize and make fun of the cleanliness initiative, since it is essential to bring change to Indian society.

He said that he is fully aware of the challenges that this campaign poses, and he recalled the criticism which he had received for starting the scheme on Gandhi Jayanti.

Modi also mentioned that politicians may be avoiding the topic of cleanliness and sanitation because they are afraid of being blamed for the country’s lack of cleanliness.

However, as Modi said, none of these things should deter the people of India from pitching in and helping to make this country a cleaner and better place to live.

Image Credit: Amitav Joyprakash Choudhury / CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

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