The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation are all set to join hands with the Ministry of Urban Development (MoUD) to take the Swachh Bharat Clean India Mission forward. The MoUD has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with USAID and a Memorandum of Cooperation (MoC) with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. These alliances validate the commitment to providing viable sanitation solutions in urban areas, checking open defecation, and safely containing, treating, and properly disposing off human waste.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation shall furnish technical and management support for the successful execution of the urban sanitation program, which also covers the setting-up of a national Program Management Unit (PMU) within the MoUD. A knowledge partnership with the MoUD will be set up by the USAID, to recognise and scale the best practices, build technical capacity, and foster public-private partnership centered on sanitation.

Venkaiah Naidu, the Minister of Urban Development endorsed the Swachh Bharat Mission as an instrument to realise the Government’s vision of a clean and developed India by 2019. He assured that the MoUD together with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and USAID will ensure that every city and town in India has a world class and affordable waste management system in place. He emphasised the criticality of provision of safe sanitation in boosting public health and environmental outcomes for India’s urban population, especially women and the poor.