Inter-Ministerial meeting convened for Swachh Bharat Mission

An Inter-Ministerial meeting was jointly convened by Secretary, Ministry of Information & Broadcasting, Shri Sunil Arora and Secretary, Ministry of Drinking Water & Sanitation, Shri. ParameswaranIyerhere today to outline the communication strategy and advocacy roadmap for the Swachh Bharat Mission.  Secretary, School Education & Literacy, Dr.Subash Chandra Khuntiawas also present besidessenior officials from Ministries of Women & Child Development, Urban Development and Heads of Media Units of I&B.

The objective of the meeting was to draw up an action plan that would enhance the communication outreach of Swachh Bharat Mission from a prescriptive to a pro-active narrative in the context of content and dissemination.  Secretary(I&B) assured full cooperation of the Ministry of I&B to the Ministry of DWS in disseminating the message and outreach of the Swachh Bharat Mission in the next phase of the campaign.  It was decided that a review of communication strategy for dissemination, advocacy and outreach would be done in the next fifteen days, in addition to the ongoing efforts. 

Secretary(DWS) stated that the Swachh Bharat Mission would utilize the vast infrastructural outreach of I&B to position effective behaviour change communication at the grass-root level. The content could take into account the best   practices emerging from states in the last 18 months.  He mentioned that the efforts of his Ministry was to enhance the social media reach by adopting Hackathons in the near future. He also agreed to utilize the Talkathon platform for effective outreach of the Swachh Bharat Mission. Secretary, School Education &Literacy highlighted that the media strategy should incorporate the outreach focussing on school children as they were the gen-next for the country.

During the meeting, it was emphasized that innovative approaches were required to enhance the outreach by utilizing the social media space more effectively, collating stories from the community and utilizing technologies to connect with critical stakeholders.The representative of the Ministry of Urban Development apprised the participants of having a National Level Digital depository on Swachh Bharat as a resource base of all prototypes of advocacy material.