On October 2, 2019, all the villages in India were declared open defecation-free (ODF). However, recently published data from the National Family Health Survey (NFHS-5) show that in not one of the 18 States surveyed did all the households have access to a toilet facility. The share of access to any type of toilet ranged between 61.7% in Bihar to 99.9% in Mizoram. The survey was initiated in mid-2019 and continued till March 2021. Data also show a wide gap in access to toilets between SC/ST households and other households.
How to read the charts
Each circle corresponds to a State. The charts depict the % of households in a State that had access to any sort of a toilet facility.
Takeaways
1. In Bihar, only 45.8% of SC households and 46.6% of ST households had access to any type of toilet facility. On the other hand, 81.6% of the non-OBC/non-SC/non-ST households in the State had access to a toilet facility.
2. Wide disparities in access to any type of toilet facility existed in Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Karnataka, Maharashtra, West Bengal and Telangana.
3. In rural Gujarat, only 70.6% of the households had access to any type of toilet facility. At the same time, 96.9% of the urban households in the State had access. Such wide disparities existed in Bihar, A.P., Karnataka and Maharashtra.
Note: In NFHS-5 Phase 1, data for major States such as Tamil Nadu, U.P., Punjab, Rajasthan, M.P., Jharkhand were not released.