An overwhelming number of Indians have claimed that they don’t have access to toilets, poking holes in Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s assertion of India having become open-defecation free under Swachh Bharat. But the NSO, which conducted the survey, also said that the respondents could not be fully trusted, and that they may have lied to underreport the access to toilets. About 30% of rural households lacked access to toilets in October 2018 even when the government said that over 95% of the target of Swachh Bharat Rural mission had been accomplished till then.
“71.3% of the households in the rural areas and about 96.2% of the households in the urban areas had access to latrine,” said NSO’s latest report on Drinking Water, Sanitation, Hygiene and Housing Condition in India. In fact, some of the states like Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra and Gujarat, which were declared open-defecation free (ODF) in 2018, also lacked access to toilets. The survey takes into account the findings from July to December 2018.
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