Resources · Water, sanitation and health
Swachh Bharat Mission and household sanitation in India: where things actually stand
India has declared almost all of its villages free of open defecation. Household surveys tell a more measured story. Both are true, and the difference between them is the most useful thing to understand about sanitation in India today. Every figure on this page carries its source and its date.
Where the numbers stand
The national dashboard, read today
The Swachh Bharat Mission (Grameen) publishes a live national dashboard. It covers rural India — that qualifier matters later on this page. Read on 28 September 2026, with the dashboard itself stamped “As on 28-Sep-2026”, it showed:
5,86,944
Total SBM villages in rural India.
5,69,852
About 97% of villages, sustaining open-defecation-free status with waste management.
5,25,910
About 90% of villages, meeting the stricter tier.
12,23,20,883
Individual household latrines constructed since 2 October 2014.
| Measure | India | Gujarat |
|---|---|---|
| Total villages | 5,86,944 | 17,973 |
| ODF Plus villages | 5,69,852 (about 97%) | 17,812 (about 99%) |
| ODF Plus Model villages | 5,25,910 (about 90%) | 16,163 (about 90%) |
| Solid waste management | 5,38,999 villages | — |
| Liquid waste management | 5,65,764 villages | — |
Definitions
ODF, ODF Plus and ODF Plus Model are three different things
This is where most coverage of Swachh Bharat goes wrong, so it is worth being precise.
ODF
Open defecation free. Every household has access to a toilet and no one in the village defecates in the open.
ODF Plus
The village sustains its ODF status and has arrangements for solid or liquid waste management.
ODF Plus Model
Sustained ODF status, solid and liquid waste management, visual cleanliness, and display of Swachh Bharat messaging.
What has been built
The government’s own dated figures
From the Ministry of Jal Shakti’s year-end review published 1 January 2026, with figures as on 16 December 2025, counted since the mission began on 2 October 2014.
Over 12 crore
Individual household latrines (IHHL) constructed.
2.67 lakh
Community sanitary complexes constructed, up from 2.49 lakh a year earlier.
5.27 / 5.41 lakh
Villages with solid and with liquid waste management arrangements respectively.
Rs 93,723.40 cr
Expenditure 2014 to 2025, against an outlay of over Rs 1.40 lakh crore.
The other measurement
What household surveys measure
A village being declared ODF Plus is an administrative declaration about the village. A household survey asks a different question: is an improved sanitation facility actually in use in this household?
49% → 70%
Use of improved sanitation facilities, between 2015-16 and 2019-21.
60% → 78%
Use of a hand-washing facility with soap and water.
The release describes these as measures of “use of” the facilities rather than of households possessing them — a distinction worth keeping, because a toilet that exists and a toilet that is used are not the same measurement.
Gujarat
Where the state stands
On the SBM-G dashboard read 28 September 2026, Gujarat had 17,973 villages, of which 17,812 were ODF Plus — about 99%, above the national figure of about 97% — and 16,163 were ODF Plus Model, about 90%, close to the national figure.
So in Gujarat the ODF Plus declaration is close to universal, and the distance still to travel is the Model tier: the roughly 1,649 villages that sustain ODF status but do not yet meet the full solid-and-liquid waste management and visual-cleanliness standard. The state dashboard separately reports 15,097 Gujarat villages verified as ODF Plus Model, 93.36% of those declared, with 8,416 through a second verification.
Practical
What this means if you are looking at your own village or ward
Three things are worth checking, and all three are answerable from public sources.
What tier is it declared at?
The SBM-G dashboard reports village-level status. Declared and verified are different columns — in the December 2025 figures, 4,89,526 villages were declared ODF Plus Model and 4,15,915 verified.
Is there a waste arrangement in fact?
ODF Plus requires solid or liquid waste management; ODF Plus Model requires both.
Is every household’s toilet in use?
This is the household question, not the village question, and it is the one the NFHS data suggests is not yet finished.
Questions
Frequently asked questions about Swachh Bharat and sanitation
In rural India, yes by declaration. The Ministry of Jal Shakti’s year-end review published 1 January 2026 states that rural sanitation coverage rose from 39% in 2014 to 100% in 2019, and that by October 2019 all villages across the country had declared themselves ODF. The mission then moved on to the ODF Plus goal: on the SBM-G dashboard read on 28 September 2026, 5,69,852 of 5,86,944 villages — about 97% — were ODF Plus. Household surveys measure something narrower: NFHS-5 (2019-21) found use of improved sanitation facilities at 70%, up from 49% in 2015-16, and that figure is all-India rather than rural only. The declaration is about villages; the survey is about households.
ODF Plus means a village sustains its open-defecation-free status and has solid or liquid waste management arrangements. ODF Plus Model is stricter: sustained ODF status, solid and liquid waste management, visual cleanliness, and display of Swachh Bharat messaging. The two are often quoted interchangeably, which is why headline percentages for Swachh Bharat appear to jump around.
No. The year-end review published 1 January 2025 said “over 95% villages in India declared ODF Plus”, counting all ODF Plus villages. The review published 1 January 2026 said “over 83% villages in India declared as ODF Plus (Model)”, counting only the stricter Model tier. Different measures, not a decline. On the same Model measure, the count rose from 4,02,591 in December 2024 to 4,89,526 in December 2025.
More than 12 crore individual household latrines and 2.67 lakh community sanitary complexes since 2 October 2014, according to the Ministry of Jal Shakti year-end review published 1 January 2026 with figures as on 16 December 2025. The live SBM-G dashboard read on 28 September 2026 showed 12,23,20,883 household toilets constructed. Note that the published press figures are given as “more than” a rounded number, so they should not be subtracted from one another to work out how many were built in a given year.
The government reported expenditure of Rs 93,723.40 crore from 2014 to 2025, against a Phase II outlay of over Rs 1.40 lakh crore, in its year-end review published 1 January 2026.
On the SBM-G dashboard read 28 September 2026, Gujarat had 17,812 of 17,973 villages at ODF Plus — about 99%, above the national figure of about 97% — and 16,163 at ODF Plus Model, about 90%. The remaining distance in Gujarat is largely the Model tier rather than basic ODF Plus status.