Swachh Bharat Mission: Half way down the road

Parameswaran Iyer, drinking water, sanitation ministry secy has set a pace, but real task starts now

Parameswaran Iyer is on a two-year contract with the government to achieve the incredible — ensuring a 100 per cent open defecation-free rural India by October 2, 2019. An IAS officer who took voluntary retirement in 2009, Iyer is back as the hand-picked secretary of the drinking water and sanitation ministry in charge of Swachh Bharat Mission’s (SBM’s) rural components and cross-ministry coordination.

The targets he is tasked to achieve can easily overwhelm. He has to ensure all 609,883 villages become open defecation-free (ODF) in two years. An estimated 171,806 claim to be ODF and of these 71,377 have been