In 2014, the Prime Minister announced a goal of eliminating open defecation by 2019. In this article, Coffey and Spears, contend that now almost two-thirds of the way through the Swachh Bharat Mission, nobody knows whether it is succeeding because there is no credible, independent survey that can offer a useful estimate of the fraction of rural persons defecating in the open.

Read more in Ideas for India, 10 July 2017