<span style="color: #222222;">The National Annual Rural Sanitation Survey, NARSS 2018-19 has found that 96.5 per cent of the households in rural India have access to a toilet. Drinking Water and Sanitation Ministry in a release said, the survey was conducted by an Independent Verification Agency under the World Bank support project to the Swachh Bharat Mission (Grameen). </span><br />'' <br />'' <span style="color: #222222;">The survey also re-confirmed the Open Defecation Free (ODF) status of over 90 per cent of villages which were previously declared and verified as ODF by various districts and States.</span><br />'' <br />'' <span style="color: #222222;"> The survey was conducted between November 2018 and February 2019 and covered over 92 thousand households in over six thousand villages across States and Union Territories.</span><br />'' <br />'' <span style="color: #222222;">Since its launch in October 2014, the world's largest sanitation program, Swachh Bharat Mission has changed the behaviour of crores of people with respect to toilet access and usage. </span><br />'' <br />'' <span style="color: #222222;">50 crore people have stopped defecating in the open since the mission began. Over nine crore toilets have been built across rural India under the mission.</span><br />