The Swachh Bharat Mission has turned out to be a top-down programme in which villagers are often coerced into building latrines, with relatively little focus on latrine use.

Through personal interviews of healthcare workers in India, the state of front-line workers in dealing with Covid-19 in the country is discussed. Lack of personal protective equipment and beds as well as the caste system that operates when it comes to doing cleaning work in the hospitals aggravates the already debilitating condition of healthcare personnel. Despite being the most important stakeholders of health in rural areas, the accredited social health activists are leading a life full of struggles.

The practices of health workers will have a major impact on the trajectory of the COVID-19 pandemic in India. The government should be as focused on providing supplies and training to small-scale providers as to major hospitals. We must train and protect our health workers so that they can care for us.

On October 2, the government will host the UN Secretary General and other international delegates at the Mahatma Gandhi International Sanitation Convention, to celebrate India’s progress on ending open defecation. While the recently released National Annual Rural Sanitation Survey data seem to show that open defecation is being eliminated from rural India, this conclusion is unfortunately premature.

In COVID-19 and beyond, we need to protect and train these essential workers.