How could social influence and persuasion contribute to the success of Swachh Bharat Abhiyan?

Question

Ghissu Editorial · Accepted Answer

Social influence and persuasion make Swachh Bharat a people's movement by moving citizens from compliance to identification with role models and finally to internalised habit. Community-Led Total Sanitation, Swachh Survekshan rankings and the Darwaza Band campaign helped villages declare themselves open defecation free by October 2019.

**Introduction**

When the Prime Minister swept the street at Valmiki Basti in Delhi on 2 October 2014, Swachh Bharat Abhiyan began as a behaviour-change campaign. Budgets build toilets, but habits change only through social influence and persuasion.

**How Social Influence Shapes Cleanliness Norms**

SKETCH: flow | From Compliance to Habit
- Compliance: norms, monitoring
- Identification: role models
- Internalisation: own value
- Lasting habit

1. **Leading by example**: Leaders sweeping streets and nominated public figures created identification, as people copy those they admire.
2. **Community norms**: Community-Led Total Sanitation triggers collective disgust at open defecation, and Nigrani Samitis kept a morning watch, making a private act a public norm.
3. **Peer competition**: Swachh Survekshan rankings since 2016 made cleanliness civic pride, with Indore's repeated first place resting on household waste segregation.
4. **Trusted messengers**: Swachhagrahis, local volunteers known to their neighbours, carried the message door to door more credibly than posters.

**How Persuasion Turns Behaviour into Habit**

1. **Emotional appeal**: The "Darwaza Band" campaign with Amitabh Bachchan and the film Toilet: Ek Prem Katha (2017) linked toilets to dignity and women's safety.
2. **Symbolism and reason**: Gandhi's spectacles as the logo tied cleanliness to national duty, while health messaging gave reasons that could be internalised.
3. **Ethical limit**: Publicly shaming defaulters, reported from some districts, crosses into coercion; persuasion lasts only when it respects dignity.

**Conclusion**

Social influence created the norm and persuasion supplied the reason, which is how villages declared themselves open defecation free by October 2019. Sustaining ODF Plus gains depends on the same internalised belief that cleanliness is everyone's duty.

How could social influence and persuasion contribute to the success of Swachh Bharat Abhiyan?

Model answer

Practise this question

Social influence and persuasion2 questions

Ghissu