Swachh Bharat Abhiyan स्वच्छ भारत अभियान, : Clean India Mission and abbreviated as SBA or SBM for "Swachh Bharat Mission") is a national campaign by the Government of India, covering 4,041 statutory cities and towns, to clean the streets, roads and infrastructure of the country.
The campaign was officially launched on 2 October 2014 at Rajghat, New Delhi, where Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself cleaned the road. It was performed in remembrance of Mahatma Gandhi's words. It is India's biggest ever cleanliness drive and 3 million government employees and school and college students of India participated in this event. The mission was started by Prime Minister Modi, who nominated nine famous personalities for the campaign, and they took up the challenge and nominated nine more people and so on. It has been carried forward since then with people from all walks of life joining it.
With effect from 1 April 1999, the Government of India restructured the Comprehensive Rural Sanitation Programme and launched the Total Sanitation Campaign (TSC) which was later (on 1 April 2012) renamed Nirmal Bharat Abhiyan (NBA).
