Toilet Usage Situation under 'Swachh Bharat Mission' in Rural West Bengal: Need Integration in Strategies of Intervention.

Sanitation is an essential component of health and overall social wellbeing. The government has implemented several programmes from time to time to ensure total sanitation for all, but the goal has not been achieved so far. Launching of 'Swachh Bharat Mission' (Clean India Mission) has ushered in lot of prospects and opened up new opportunities to intervene and make India a healthy place to live. Under the overall ambit of this mission, West Bengal has been implementing 'Mission Nirmal Bangla' (Clean Bengal Mission), which has made steady progress on construction of toilets but usage situation has not changed significantly. Based on the secondary data, this article reviews the situation in West Bengal, locates the present challenges and suggests some strategies under the broad framework of rights-based approach to ensure the usage of toilets to make the state clean and healthy in near future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]