When the Swachh Bharat Mission was launched in 2014, its promise was deceptively simple: ensure every Indian household had access to a toilet. A decade later, that promise has largely been fulfilled. Over 12 crore toilets have been constructed in rural India, and every village has declared itself Open Defecation Free (ODF). The impact has been profound — improvements in public health, dignity for women and marginalised groups, and a decisive break from one of India’s most persistent development failures.
Yet, this success has revealed a deeper, more complex challenge. Toilets were only the first step. What happens after they are used is now the real test of India’s sanitation revolution.
Why Sanitation Does Not End With Toilets
In rural India, most toilets are connected to septic tanks or pits. These containment systems inevitably fill up and require desludging every few years. Where organised services are absent, households either delay desludging indefinitely or rely on informal operators who often dump untreated waste into fields, drains or water bodies.
Such practices threaten to undo the very gains achieved under ODF. Contaminated groundwater, unsafe handling of faecal waste and environmental pollution undermine public health outcomes, particularly in peri-urban and densely populated rural areas. Recognising this, the sanitation discourse has shifted from access to sustainability.
SBM (Grameen) Phase II and the Idea of ODF Plus
This transition defines Swachh Bharat Mission (Grameen) Phase II, with its emphasis on ODF Plus. The ODF Plus framework moves beyond toilet construction to focus on:
- Safe management of solid and liquid waste
- Complete sanitation service chains, including faecal sludge treatment
- Behavioural change and local institutional capacity
Progress on paper has been substantial. By October 2025, over 5.68 lakh villages — nearly 97% of India’s total — had been declared ODF Plus. However, faecal sludge management (FSM) remains one of the weakest links in this chain, largely because treatment infrastructure and service delivery models are still evolving in rural contexts.
Maharashtra’s Early Lead in Faecal Sludge Management
Among States, Maharashtra has emerged as a laboratory for FSM solutions. The State has invested in more than 200 faecal sludge treatment plants (FSTPs) in urban areas and enabled co-treatment of faecal sludge in 41 sewage treatment plants. These facilities form a strong urban backbone, but their benefits do not automatically extend to surrounding villages.
The missing link lies in integration — connecting rural sanitation needs with underutilised urban treatment capacity. It is here that urban–rural partnerships offer a practical and scalable pathway.
Satara’s Urban–Rural Sanitation Partnership Model
A working example of such integration has emerged in Satara district. Satara city’s faecal sludge treatment plant, with a capacity of 65 kilo litres per day, was operating below its potential. Four nearby villages — Jakatwadi, Songaon, Kodoli and Degaon — have now been linked to this facility.
Under this arrangement:
- Gram panchayats will contract a private service provider for scheduled desludging every five years.
- Households will contribute through a modest sanitation tax, ensuring affordability and predictability.
- An agreement between the Satara Panchayat Samiti and Municipal Council allows authorised rural desludging vehicles to use the city’s treatment plant at no cost.
This model formalises a service that was previously irregular, unsafe and expensive, while simultaneously improving utilisation of existing urban infrastructure — a rare example of mutual benefit in urban–rural governance.
When Villages Must Go It Alone: The Cluster Approach
Not all villages can be connected to nearby cities. In such cases, decentralised and cluster-based solutions become necessary. The village of Mayani in Khatav taluka illustrates this alternative.
Facing high demand for desludging services, the gram panchayat has agreed to institutionalise scheduled desludging every five to seven years, managed either by private operators or local self-help groups. More significantly, Mayani has been selected for a cluster-level faecal sludge treatment plant under SBM-G, designed to serve nearly 80 surrounding villages.
This approach demonstrates that rural clusters can pool resources to create standalone treatment infrastructure that is both technically feasible and financially viable, without depending entirely on urban systems.
Why Faecal Sludge Management Is a Governance Challenge
The experience from Satara underlines a broader lesson. Sustaining ODF gains is not merely a technical problem but a governance one. Effective FSM requires coordination across multiple actors:
- Urban and rural local bodies
- Private service providers
- State governments and district administrations
- Citizens as paying and monitoring stakeholders
Clear contracts, predictable revenue streams, regulatory oversight and public awareness are as important as treatment plants themselves. Without these, sanitation risks slipping back into informality.
A Model With National Relevance
If scaled up, such urban–rural linkages and cluster-based FSM models could reshape rural sanitation across India. They offer a way to protect public health, prevent environmental contamination and ensure that sanitation infrastructure remains functional long after construction targets are met.
The true measure of Swachh Bharat, therefore, lies not just in toilets built, but in systems sustained — systems that quietly manage waste, safeguard ecosystems and preserve the dignity that the mission set out to restore.
What to Note for Prelims?
- Objectives and components of Swachh Bharat Mission (Grameen) Phase II.
- Meaning and significance of ODF Plus.
- Concept of faecal sludge management (FSM).
- Role of urban–rural partnerships in sanitation.
What to Note for Mains?
- Why sanitation outcomes depend on waste management, not just toilet access.
- Challenges of FSM in rural and peri-urban India.
- Urban–rural convergence as a governance tool.
- Scalability of cluster-based sanitation infrastructure models.
