Swachh Bharat: Akshay Kumar launches ad campaign; this is what he is promoting

Bollywood actor Akshay Kumar has launched advertisement campaign for the Swachh Bharat Mission (Grameen) in Delhi. The campaign focuses on promoting the twin pit toilet technology in rural India, and also features actor Bhumi Pednekar along with Kumar. The Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation also announced that the producers of Toilet Ek Prem Katha have given rights to all state and district teams of the Swachh Bharat Mission (Grameen) to screen the movie in villages on a non-commercial basis.

Akshay Kumar interacted with Swachh Bharat Mission officials, district collectors, communication experts and members from the media on the occasion. During his interaction, he spoke about the need for influencers of society to talk freely about toilets, and empty toilet pits around the country to destigmatise cleaning of one’s own toilet by members of the family itself, a Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation statement on Sunday said.

Parameswaran Iyer, Secretary, Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation, spoke about the contribution made by Akshay Kumar to the Swachh Bharat Mission.  He said that right from his movie, Toilet Ek Prem Katha, which was seen and appreciated by rural and urban people across the country, to his participation in the twin pit toilet advertisement campaign for the Swachh Bharat Mission, Kumar has been a strong supporter of the sanitation movement underway in the country.

Watch this video here:

The District Collectors and field officials, during the interaction, spoke about the power of women in leading the sanitation mission in rural areas, and the role played by the movie, “Toilet Ek Prem Katha” in leading this behavior change.  "The advertisement campaign launched yesterday is an effort, supported by the World Bank, towards encouraging this technology using mass media," the statement said. The film can be found on the YouTube channel of the Swachh Bharat Mission (Grameen) at tinyurl.com/sbmgramin. It will be translated in several regional languages, and the Hindi version will start airing on television channels with immediate effect, it said.