Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been conferred the ‘Global Goalkeeper Award’ from Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for the Swachh Bharat mission on Wednesday morning.One of PM Modi’s ambitious projects ‘Swachh Bharat Abhiyan’, or ‘the Clean India Mission’ was launched on 2nd October 2014.
Getting the award in the year of Mahatma Gandhi’s 150th birth anniversary is personally significant for me. When 130 crore people take a pledge, any challenge can be overcome,” PM Modi said in a tweet.
Sharing this honour with his countrymen, PM Modi tweeted ‘’I dedicate the Global Goalkeeper Award, conferred by the @gatesfoundation, to the 130 crore people of India and the collective endeavours of our nation to improve cleanliness. It makes me most happy that India’s successes in sanitation have helped women and children the most.’’ He expressed thanks to all Indians who transformed this Swachh Bharat campaign into a ‘’people’s movement.’’
“No such campaign was seen or heard about in any other country in the recent past. It might have been launched by our government, but people took control of it,” PM Modi added.
“In the last five years, a record more than 11 crore toilets were constructed. If this mission has benefited someone the most, it is the poor of this country and the women,” Modi noted.
As said by the prime minister, the poor people and the women of India were benefitted the most by this mission. A record more than 11 crore toilets were constructed in the last five years. Currently, 98% of Indian villages have rural sanitation coverage as compared to 38% four years ago.Because of lack of toilets, a number of girls had to drop out of schools. Daughters want to study, but due to lack of toilets, they had to abandon their education mid-way and sit at home,he added.
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation had also reported that as rural sanitation had improved in India, it had led to a decline in heart problems among children and improvement in the Body Mass Index (BMI) among women.
Gandhiji used to say a village could only become a model when it was completely clean. Today we are heading towards making the entire country a model, the PM said.
“The campaign has not only improved the lives of crores of Indians, but it has also played a significant role in achieving the goals set by the UN,” Modi said.
