Abstract
The Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM) was launched in 2014 with the aim of ensuring a ‘clean India’ by 2nd October 2019 as a fitting tribute to Mahatma Gandhi on his 150th Birth Anniversary. This mission is indeed successful in acknowledging the unhygienic conditions in India. Instead of ignoring the sanitation issue, working towards the clean India is undoubtedly quite appreciable. Not only that the target and the achievement level claimed by the government seems unbelievable. Under the Swachh Bharat Aviyan (SBA), the sanitation coverage, especially in rural India has gone up from 42% to over 63%. Though, the SBA is not a toilet construction programme but a behaviour changing mass movement. By 2019-21, the problem of open defecation not only reduced to a great extent but also most of the states declared as Open Defection Free (ODF). Moreover, under this programme, community toilets will be built in residential areas where it is difficult to construct individual household toilets. Public toilets will also be constructed in designated locations such as tourist places, markets, bus stations, railway stations, etc. But the question arises because of data disparities between the claimed and actual data regarding the numbers of bathroom and latrine construction and usage among the households at all India level, especially in rural areas. Here we are to examine the heterogeneity among the data revealed by the government and the various survey data and try to find out the possible logistic reasons behind this.