UN Secretary-General lauds Modi’s ambitious Clean India program

The UN Secretary-General has praised India's 20 billion US dollars sanitation programme 'Swachh Bharat', or 'Clean India' at the closing session of the Mahatma Gandhi International sanitation Convention in New Delhi on Tuesday. In his keynote address at the summit, which was attended by India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Antonio Guterres said the country was tackling the problem of open defecation urgently and could be a model for other developing countries. “An estimated 2.3 billion people worldwide still do not have basic sanitation facilities. I believe that what is happening in India is quickly changing these statistics,” he said.