By the end of November, the Centre is expected to release the data on drinking water, sanitation, hygiene and housing conditions, which will provide a comprehensive idea about the on ground success or failure of the Swachh Bharat campaign, Pravin Srivastava, Chief Statistician of India, Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI), said at the sidelines of a two-day conference of Central and State statistical organisations here.
The 76th round of the countrywide survey of the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) under the MoSPI was conducted between July 2018 and December 2018. “We are looking at the results and hopefully, I think, within this month it should get out,” Mr. Srivastava said.
The survey will formally indicate how the Swachh Bharat campaign performed over the last half a decade in various areas from sanitation to maintenance of hygiene, improvement in quality of drinking water and the impact the campaign has had on the development of housing. So far, private agencies have done such surveys and acknowledged the achievements of the campaign. But this round of survey has “other significance”, said public health experts.
“Achievements of the Swachh Bharat campaign are not only in completion of toilet construction. The campaign will be considered successful when it would be able to influence other indicators like outbreak of disease or access to clean water. This round of survey is important as it would provide information on those indicators,” said a public health expert.
The last similar survey, 69th round, was conducted between July 2012 and December 2012, much before the Swachh Bharat campaign was launched. Answering why it took so much time to release the data, almost a year after the survey was completed, Mr. Srivastava indicated that the “survey system is little archaic”. He said tablets are “not used” for collection of data which would ensure faster upload of data to server. “Tabs are used for Periodic Labour Force Survey but not for the 76th round,” Mr. Srivastava said.
Among other issues, he accepted that it was a “challenge” to make all the States “work at the same pace” with the Centre to collect and release its data.
“This is not a problem which has occurred overnight. That is why we are developing platforms, so that the States could take advantage of it. Lots of data gets collected but not processed because of infrastructural constraints. These platforms will try to make sure that the data is processed as quickly as possible,” said Mr. Srivastava.
