'Clean India' Campaign Receives ₹200 Crore from TCS and Bharti

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) and Bharti Foundation have announced a contribution of over ₹200 crore for the government's "Swachh Bharat" or "Clean India" campaign, which is likely to be completed by 2019, as a tribute to Mahatma Gandhi on his 150th birth anniversary.

On 15 August, Oriental Bank too had announced that it would contribute ₹2 crore to construct over 200 toilets for girls and boys in government primary schools in villages.

Tata Consultancy Services:

TCS announced that it would finance hygienic sanitation facilities for girl students across 10, 000 schools and would contribute ₹100 crore for this initiative.

"We firmly believe that achieving the mission of providing hygienic sanitation for girl students will have a tangible impact on the level of education achievement and development of India's next generation," Times of India quoted TCS CEO and MD N Chandrasekaran.

Bharti Foundation:

This firm announced a campaign named "Satya Bharti Abhiyan" to develop rural household and government school sanitation facilities in north Indian state of Punjab. The foundation has decided to work on Ludhiana district in Punjab and as part of this initiative, the firm has planned to invest ₹100 crore for constructing toilets over the next three years.

"Lack of private sanitation facilities in rural households not only constitutes a major cause of embarrassment for the women, but also points to a much wider problem of rural hygiene and cleanliness...It is our commitment that no single household or school in rural Ludhiana will be without a toilet by the end of this tenure," Business Standard quoted foundation chairman Sunil Bharti Mittal. 

'Swachh Bharat Mission'

Prime Minister Narendra Modi extensively spoke about the "Clean India" initiative on 15 August, a month after a recent report prepared by the WHO and the UNICEF said that 597 million people practice open defecation in India, reported PTI. 

While Jairam Ramesh from UPA government launched Nirmal Bharat Abhiyan (NBA) in 2012 to address the issue after Total Sanitation Campaign launched in 1999, the budget allocated for the purpose was barely used. 

"Out of 18.3 billion rupees set aside for sanitation, only 45 percent has been used partly because local authorities can't get more funds until they prove how they spent the previous year's money and partly because the central government often simply ran out of cash" Bloomberg quoted Avani Kapur, an analyst at Delhi from Centre for Policy Research.