Singapore and India: A shared vision for a clean future

FOUR years ago, Prime Minister Narenda Modi launched the Swachh Bharat Mission to achieve the vision of a "Clean India" by 2019. Fittingly, Oct 2, 2019, is also the 150th birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi, who championed sanitation as a national priority.

Over the last four years, India has made great progress, building more than 86 million toilets for households, and declaring nearly half a million (470,000) villages free of open defecation.

Singapore has travelled this journey, too. Since independence, we have worked hard to create a clean and green living environment for our people. In the early days, many homes were not sewered. "Nightsoil" was collected in buckets, and transported by malodorous trucks to sewerage plants. Often the human waste was dumped into nearby streams and rivers, polluting and poisoning the waters.