Revision summary
The mission expanded toilets and a civic cleanliness language. Gains depend on water, use and waste treatment. Caste-stigmatised sanitation work is the hard implication. Civil society is needed for behaviour, audit and worker dignity. Example: groups that pair toilets with an end to manual scavenging.
Model answer
Introduction
Swachh Bharat Abhiyan made sanitation a national mission of toilets, behaviour, and images of cleanliness. Its implications are material, caste-ridden, and moral. Civil society has a necessary role because the state cannot scrub habit and stigma alone.
Body
Implications
- Toilet construction raised coverage numbers and could cut open defecation where water, pits, and use actually followed the pan.
- Public hygiene campaigns named cleanliness as civic duty, a Yogendra Singh-type modernization of a daily tradition.
- Caste implication is sharp: sanitation labour remains stigmatised. A mission that does not end manual scavenging can become cleanliness for some, dirt work for Dalits.
- Gender: toilets can mean safety. Without water and privacy they become unused symbols.
- Rural–urban: city waste and village pits are different sociologies; one slogan covers both.
Civil society’s role
- Yes. NGOs, panchayat women’s groups, and social audits translate a mission into use, repair, and dignity of sanitation workers.
- Example: Sulabh-type organisations and many local rights groups combined toilet access with campaigns against dry latrines and for worker dignity, a civil path the mission needs.
- Media and school clubs spread the norm; they can also hide caste if they only photograph a VIP broom.
Limit
- Civil society is not a substitute for public drains, water, and labour rights.
- Elite cleanliness clubs can moralise the poor without touching the sewer contract.
Flow diagram
flowchart TD SB[Swachh Bharat toilets] --> H[Health safety] SB --> C[Caste labour stigma] CS[Civil society audit dignity] --> U[Use and worker rights]
Conclusion
Swachh Bharat’s implication is a possible public-health gain wrapped in caste and gender tests. Civil society has a role in use, audit, and worker dignity, as sanitation-rights groups show. Toilets without those roles are a count, not a clean society.
Quick related
Students also ask
-
Do you agree that social movements are caused by opportunity structures that are generated by media? Why?
Next question in the 2019 paper (Q7). View answer →
-
Is a toilet a social movement?
The mission is state-led. Civil groups make it a lived norm.
-
Can civil society replace the municipality?
No. Sewers and wages are public duties.
PYQ trend
When UPSC asked this
Related PYQs from other years, newest first. Open a question to read it.
-
2019 · Q2(a) · Sociology GS 2 · 20 marks
Critically examine Dube's contributions to the study of Indian villages -
2019 · Q2(b) · Sociology GS 2 · 20 marks
What is caste politics? Substantiate your answer with examples of how identities are defined by caste dynamics -
2019 · Q3(c) · Sociology GS 2 · 10 marks
Give an account of Ranajit Guha's approach in studying 'subaltern class' -
2019 · Q4(c) · Sociology GS 2 · 10 marks
What do you understand by LGBTQ ? Comment on the issues concerning their marriage rights -
2019 · Q5(c) · Sociology GS 2 · 10 marks
Elaborate urbanism as a way of life in India -
2019 · Q6(c) · Sociology GS 2 · 10 marks
Has reduction of green cover affected ecological degradation leading to global warming? Elaborate your answer with illustration -
2019 · Q8(a) · Sociology GS 2 · 20 marks
Why has 'Active aging' become a glocal goal? Do you agree that the role of elderly care-giving is disproportionately gendered in developing countries? Why? -
2018 · Q1(a) · Sociology GS 2 · 10 marks
Write a note on G.S.Ghurye's Indological perspective of understanding Indian society.
More from this paper
Q1(a) · UPSC Mains 2019 · Sociology GS 2 · 10 marks
Elaborate Srinivas's views on religion and society among the Coorgs
Religion and Society
Srinivas studied Coorg religion as observed social structure. The okka and ancestor cult knit kin and land. Hinduism appears as graded ritual interaction, not a church of equals. Sanskritization and local dominance already organise prestige. The monograph founds his later field view of Indian society.
Q1(b) · UPSC Mains 2019 · Sociology GS 2 · 10 marks
Illustrate the contribution of the Tebhaga Movement to the peasants struggle in India
Social Movements in Modern India
Tebhaga demanded two-thirds of the crop for the sharecropper. Kisan Sabha organisation made it a mass peasant movement in Bengal. It placed class tenancy at the heart of the freedom-era agrarian question. Women and bargadars joined harvest defence. Its unfinished legal lesson returned in Operation Barga.
Q1(c) · UPSC Mains 2019 · Sociology GS 2 · 10 marks
Examine the changing initiatives of the land tenure system in India
Rural and Agrarian Social Structure
Colonial settlements created landlord, ryot, and village-share grids. Abolition, tenancy laws and ceilings cut intermediaries unevenly. Rich peasants and reverse tenancy recast who commands surplus. Operation Barga and FRA try to title tillers and forest dwellers. Records still lag the field.
Toppers' copies
Toppers' copies for this question will be uploaded soon.