On October 2, 2019, Prime Minister Narendra Modi stood before a crowd in Ahmedabad and declared India "open defecation free" (ODF). It was a bold statement, timed to honor Mahatma Gandhi’s 150th birth anniversary and mark the culmination of the ambitious Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM), launched in 2014. The mission promised a cleaner India by building over 110 million toilets and shifting behaviors entrenched for generations. Fast forward to today, April 2025, and India has moved beyond ODF to "ODF Plus," a phase focused on sustaining toilet use and managing waste. On paper, it’s a global success story—hundreds of millions lifted from the indignity of open defecation, a feat celebrated with awards and international applause.
But here’s the thing: if you take an early morning stroll near a railway track in almost any Indian city—say, Mumbai, Delhi, or even smaller towns—you’ll see something that doesn’t quite match the headlines. People squatting along the tracks, relieving themselves in plain sight. It’s not a rare sight; it’s routine. So how does this square with India’s ODF and ODF Plus status? Something doesn’t add up. Let’s unpack this contradiction and ask: Is India really as clean as it claims, or are we papering over a messier reality?
The ODF Triumph: Numbers That Impress
First, credit where it’s due. The Swachh Bharat Mission was a colossal effort. The government says it built over 100 million household toilets in rural areas alone, slashing open defecation rates from around 40% in 2015 to near-zero by 2019, at least according to official data. Villages self-declared themselves ODF, districts followed, and by 2019, the entire country joined the club. The ODF Plus phase, launched soon after, aimed to keep the momentum going—ensuring toilets were used, maintained, and paired with waste management systems. By 2025, over 360,000 of India’s 600,000 villages are reportedly ODF Plus.
Globally, this looks like a win. The World Bank and UNICEF have praised India for driving down open defecation numbers faster than almost anywhere else. From 600 million people defecating in the open in 2014 to an estimated 150–160 million by 2022, the progress is undeniable. It’s a massive dent in a problem that once made India the world’s open defecation capital, accounting for over half the global total. Behavior change campaigns, financial incentives, and political will—spearheaded by Modi himself—powered this shift. So why, then, are railway tracks still lined with human waste every morning?
The Railway Reality: A Stinking Counterpoint
Walk along the tracks in Mumbai’s sprawling suburbs or Delhi’s outer fringes at dawn, and you’ll see it: men, women, sometimes even kids, squatting unapologetically. It’s not just a rural issue either—urban slums near railway lines are hotspots. In Mumbai, declared ODF in 2017, the sight is so common that locals barely blink. Slum dwellers near the tracks often lack access to functional toilets, and even when they exist, long queues, poor maintenance, or nighttime closures push people outdoors. The railways, which aren’t under municipal control, become a convenient fallback.
This isn’t an isolated anecdote. Posts on X frequently mock India’s sanitation claims, pointing to railway tracks as evidence that ODF is more slogan than reality. And it’s not just optics—open defecation near tracks poses health risks, pollutes water sources, and undermines the hygiene narrative India wants to project. If the country is ODF and moving toward ODF Plus, how is this still happening on such a visible scale?
Questioning the Data: What’s the Catch?
The disconnect starts with how ODF is defined and measured. Officially, a village or city is ODF if "at any point of the day, not a single person is found defecating in the open." Sounds straightforward, but the process relies heavily on self-reporting. Villages declare themselves ODF, often under pressure from local officials eager to meet targets. Verification happens, sure—over 90% of declared ODF villages were checked by 2019—but it’s not foolproof. Surveys are snapshots, not 24/7 audits, and they don’t always catch early morning trackside habits.
Then there’s the gap between access and use. Building toilets doesn’t guarantee people use them. In rural areas, some prefer open spaces due to habit, water scarcity, or shoddily built latrines that clog or stink. In urban slums, community toilets might exist but be too few, too dirty, or too far. A 2019 National Statistical Office survey found that even after the ODF declaration, nearly 30% of rural households lacked toilet access, and some with toilets didn’t use them. The WHO-UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme in 2022 estimated that 17% of rural Indians—about 150 million people—still defecate outdoors. That’s a far cry from zero.
So, the data looks rosy because it counts toilets built, not toilets used—or tracks shat upon. Behavioral change, the linchpin of ODF sustainability, is harder to quantify and slower to take root. And railway zones? They often fall into a jurisdictional gray area, ignored by municipal ODF metrics and left to fester.
Global Perception: Still the "Unhygienic" Poster Child?
India’s sanitation woes have long shaped its global image. For decades, it was the go-to example of open defecation—fields, streets, and yes, railway tracks painted as emblematic of a "dirty" nation. Swachh Bharat aimed to flip that script, and to some extent, it has. The drop from 600 million to 150 million is real progress, and urban centers are cleaner than they were a decade ago. Yet the railway track scenes keep the old stereotype alive. Internationally, India’s hygiene reputation remains a mixed bag—praised for effort, but still tagged as unhygienic in popular discourse, from X memes to travel blogs.
Is that fair? Partly. Open defecation is down, but 150 million people is still a lot—more than Nigeria, Ethiopia, and Pakistan combined, the next worst offenders. The railway track problem amplifies this because it’s so public, so undeniable. It’s not just a hygiene issue; it’s a dignity and health crisis, linked to child mortality and waterborne diseases. Until those tracks are clear, the "unhygienic India" label won’t fully fade.
What’s Really Going On?
So, how do we reconcile ODF claims with squatting silhouettes at sunrise? It’s not that India’s lying outright—it’s that the story’s incomplete. The SBM achieved scale, but not depth. Toilets were built, but systems to sustain them—water supply, maintenance, waste disposal—lagged. Urban slums and railway-adjacent communities got short shrift, caught in a tug-of-war between civic bodies and railway authorities. And the human factor—culture, poverty, apathy—can’t be engineered away overnight.
India’s not unique here. Big sanitation drives elsewhere, like in sub-Saharan Africa, also hit snags between infrastructure and behavior. But India’s scale and visibility make the gaps glaring. Declaring ODF was a milestone, not a finish line, and ODF Plus is a step toward addressing that. Yet without tackling the railway track reality—more toilets, better upkeep, stricter enforcement—the victory feels hollow.
The Bottom Line
India’s ODF and ODF Plus labels are a testament to ambition and effort, but they don’t tell the whole story. Next time you hear the country’s clean, take a dawn walk by the tracks. The truth’s there, squatting in plain sight. Something doesn’t make sense because the data’s too tidy, the reality too messy. Progress? Absolutely. Perfection? Not even close. Until those tracks are as clean as the spreadsheets, India’s hygiene revolution remains a work in progress.
