Amitabh Bachchan led Toilet Usage Campaign, ‘Darwaza Band’, set for national launch

Union Government will launch a new campaign called Darwaza Band on 30 May 2017 for the promotion of toilet usage in the rural areas across the country.

The aggressive new campaign of the Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation called Darwaza Band seeks to promote toilet usage across the villages of India.

Bollywood star Amitabh Bachchan, who leads the campaign, is proposed to be joined by Union Minister for Drinking Water and Sanitation Narendra Singh Tomar and Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis at the formal launch event to be held in Mumbai.

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Important highlights about Darwaza Band

• The campaign has been supported by the World Bank.

• It is being rolled out countrywide immediately after the launch.

• It is designed to encourage behaviour change in men who have toilets but are not using them.

• The campaign also features actor, Anushka Sharma, who will be seen encouraging women to stand up for this issue in their villages and assume a leadership role.

Bachchan has been a major supporter and ambassador for the Swachh Bharat Mission and is already associated with its ongoing campaigns.

What is Darwaza Band?

Reports suggest the term Darwaza Band of the campaign stands for shutting the door on open defecation.

About Swachh Bharat Mission

Swachh Bharat Abhiyan (Clean India Movement) is a campaign that was launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on 2 October 2014 at Rajghat, New Delhi. The campaign seeks to clean the streets, roads and infrastructure of the country's 4041 statutory cities and towns. Behaviour change has been the focus of Swachh Bharat Mission, which is being pursued through a countrywide comprehensive IEC (Information-Education-Communication) programme.

Communication campaigns have been taken up both, at the central and state levels, for promoting sustained use of toilets and for sustaining the Open Defecation Free status achieved.

Objectives of Swachh Bharat are to reduce or eliminate open defecation through the construction of individual, cluster and community toilets.

Under the campaign, the government aims to achieve an Open-Defecation Free (ODF) India by 2 October 2019, the 150th anniversary of the birth of Mahatma Gandhi. For that purpose, it has a plan to construct 12 million toilets in rural India, at a projected cost of Rs 1.96 lakh crore (US$30 billion).

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