I will help you clean up India, Obama tells Modi

The United States will give "concrete support" to Indian prime minister Narendra Modi’s campaign to improve hygiene and sanitation throughout India by 2018, President Obama has said.

His administration will use its influence to encourage American charities and companies to offer experts and new technology solutions to improve public sanitation in time for India to mark the 150th anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi’s birth.

The president’s comments, made in an article co-written Mr Modi and published in the Washington Post, amount to a personal endorsement for one of the Indian prime minister’s key campaigns. It will be officially launched on Thursday with officials and ministers giving up their public holiday to sweep some of India’s poorest neighbourhoods.

It marks a dramatic improvement in relations not only between the two governments but also between the two leaders. Until February this year Mr Modi was banned from entering the United States because of his failure to stop the 2002 Gujarat riots in which more than 700 Muslims were massacred.

Relations reached their nadir over the new year after an Indian diplomat was arrested and charged with visa fraud after she gave misleading information about how much she paid her Indian domestic servant in the United States. The charges were later dropped after her diplomatic immunity was upgraded but not before the incident set back relations some distance.

President Obama’s offer to support the ‘Clean India’ campaign, one of Mr Modi’s highest priorities since he won a landslide victory in May, has gone some way to repairing the damage.

In their article, the two leaders said: “The United States stands ready to assist. An immediate area of concrete support is the “Clean India” campaign, where we will leverage private and civil society innovation, expertise and technology to improve sanitation and hygiene throughout India”.

The US government will help India develop three "smart cities", offer assistance with developing its creaking infrastructure and collaborate to provide clean water and improved sanitation in 500 urban centres. It will work as a partner in the Clean India campaign alongside the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Water, Sanitation and Hygiene Alliance (WASH).

In India’s top seven cities, 23 million people live in makeshift slum housing without access to clean water or toilets.

Narendra Modi made cleaning up the country his top priority within hours of his election, but it is a huge challenge. A minister in the previous government said the country was home to the world’s “largest open air toilet” with more than 600 million practicing open defecation. As a result of this, more children under five die of diarrhea in India than any other country.

Thirteen Indian cities are among the world’s 20 most polluted, with the capital Delhi officially top of the list. Two of its sacred rivers, the Yamuna and the Ganges, have been reduced to open sewers in many stretches. Delhi, on the banks of the Yamuna, is “drowning in its own excrement”, according to environmentalists.

Its nineteen sewage treatment plants are often shut by power cuts, allowing an estimated 550 million gallons of raw waste to flow into the river every day. Large parts of the capital are not connected to the sewage pipe network which means the smell of poor governance hangs in the air.

Some campaigners believe Indians have simply not cared enough about cleaning up their own mess and that President Obama cannot do it for them.

“No one is going to come from abroad to clean up our country, we have to do it ourselves. We need to create a sense of sanitation and hygiene in our public”, said Dr. Bindeshwar Pathak, founder of the Sulabh Sanitation Movement which builds toilets in India.

But Mr Modi rolling sweeping the slums would be a good start. “If the prime minister picks up the broom it’s not just mere symbolism but should be seen as a personal effort to bring change. This can go a long way”, he added.