Swachh Bharat Mission (Urban)

Swachh Bharat Mission (Urban), or SBM-U, is the central urban sanitation and cleanliness mission implemented through the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs, and it fits the EO/RO exam as an important urban scheme linked with Rajasthan's municipal law, rules and local-body administration. Swachh Bharat Mission (Urban), usually written as SBM-U, is a central urban sanitation and cleanliness mission implemented through the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs, with States and Urban Local Bodies as the field institutions. For the EO/RO examination, it is not a general-awareness add-on; the official syllabus places it in the Part B block dealing with the Rajasthan Municipalities Act, municipal rules and important schemes operating in Rajasthan's urban areas. This location matters because questions are likely to ask what a municipal body is expected to do under the scheme, not merely when the mission was launched. The Swachh Bharat Mission-Urban official portal states that the first phase aimed to cover 4,041 statutory towns across the country.

The first phase of SBM-U began on 2 October 2014 and was framed around a time-bound sanitation target ending with 2 October 2019. Its official objectives were direct and exam-friendly: elimination of open defecation, eradication of manual scavenging, modern and scientific municipal solid waste management, behaviour change around healthy sanitation practices, awareness about sanitation and public health, and capacity augmentation of Urban Local Bodies. These objectives should be read together. SBM-U was not only a toilet-construction programme. Toilets were the most visible instrument, but the mission also required the city to move towards safe containment, regular cleaning, waste collection, processing, monitoring and citizen participation.

A useful way to remember the mission identity is the sequence sanitation access, clean public spaces, waste systems and behaviour change. Sanitation access covers individual household toilets, community toilets and public toilets or urinals. Clean public spaces cover the end of open defecation and urination, better maintenance of facilities, and attention to floating populations at markets, transport points and tourist places. Waste systems cover collection, transportation, processing and disposal of municipal solid waste. Behaviour change links all of this to public awareness, school and ward-level participation, citizen feedback, user charges and institutional habit formation.

Rajasthan's urban local-government context gives the topic an administrative lens. The State's local self-government machinery works through municipal corporations, councils and boards, while the scheme support flows through State-level and city-level monitoring arrangements. The Rajasthan scheme material also identifies two large implementation heads: Open Defecation Free work and Solid Waste Management. Under the ODF head, Rajasthan's urban bodies had to identify toilet-less households, support household toilet construction, plan community toilets where space constraints existed, and provide public toilet facilities at high-footfall locations. Under the solid-waste head, ULBs had to align with the Solid Waste Management Rules, 2016 through door-to-door collection, transport, processing and disposal.

SBM-U 2.0 carries forward the first phase rather than replacing it. Launched in 2021 for the 2021-2026 period, it shifts the headline from achieving ODF outcomes to sustaining safe sanitation and making cities garbage-free. For exam purposes, continuity is the safest answer: SBM-U created the base of toilets, ODF certification, IEC and SWM systems; SBM-U 2.0 deepens that mission into source segregation, scientific processing, legacy waste remediation, used-water management, faecal-sludge and septage treatment, and reduction of single-use plastic. A short answer that treats 2.0 as a completely separate scheme will miss the municipal-service continuity that the syllabus is testing.