States and the Centre often speak in different tones. But now, statistics reveal that even their “facts” differ: there exists a huge disparity between the statistics submitted by states to the Centre on rural households under sanitation cover and the census.
In their submission to the union ministry of water supply and sanitation, all the states have claimed that an average 70 percent households of their rural areas are under sanitation — it means 70 percent households in the rural areas of the states have proper toilet facility on their premises. However, the census report 2011 says that only 32.70 percent of India’s rural households is under sanitation cover.
The gap between the claims of the states and the truth is more than 60 per cent in many states, if one goes by the population census 2011 and the report of the National Sample Survey Organisation.
“The staggering gap between these two figures is quite worrisome, and it shows that there are flaws in the process of implementation of the schemes,” said Jairam Ramesh, union minister of rural development. The ministry of Water Supply and Sanitation has also asked states to explain the reasons for this gap. However, no answer has been given yet.
At the state government level, the state health department does the survey through its municipal bodies while the Centre gets this survey done by the registrar of census under the home ministry.
For instance, Gujarat and Haryana have claimed that the percentage of sanitation equipped households in their rural areas are 81.74 and 91.80 respectively whereas the census report say the two states have 34.20 and 57.7 percent of their rural households under sanitation respectively.
Bigger states like Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and Maharastra have fared badly and gap between two statistics gets wider in their cases. UP claims that 74.61 percent of its rural households under sanitation whereas census report shows a meagre 22.9 percent households under sanitation.
Maharashtra is not better. The state government claims is 70.29 percent in comparison to 44.20 percent shown by the census report. NSSO survey conducted in 2008-09 shows that only 39.90 percent rural households in Maharashtra are covered under sanitation.
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