Sikkim is barely an area of around 7000 sq. Km, which has only 4 districts and is the 2nd smallest state (area wise). Its total population is 6 lakh and is the least populated Indian state. It is one of the seven sisters, which the name is given to northeastern states, and in most cases, our media doesn’t tell us anything about it. Anyways the media is north-centric only, and that’s why I think we need to talk about it when something good happens in these states. Many good things are happening in Sikkim in recent years, and I am going to tell you about them in this article.


1. Making India open defecation free

The first thing is making India open defecation free, this scheme was launched in India in 2016, under Swachh Baharat Abhiyan, and is told that all then a large level of coverage has been done, but this still needs to be done in the rural area, but overall people think that many toilets have been built under this scheme. But do you know that before 8 years of the launching of this scheme, Sikkim was already open defecation-free, in 2008? In 1999 this incentive scheme was started that if you build toilets in your homes then the government will give you money, and till 2008, this state was already open defecation free, 99% of the people had toilets in their homes, and 100% of people used either their homes or community toilet. And the reason behind this, as told by many experts is that people living in Sikkim keep special care for cleanliness and are very particular about this. Hence experts believed that this state will achieve this thing very quickly after being launched in 1999.


2. Cleanliness

The second point is about cleanliness only, either it is solid waste management, subsidized sanitary pads in schools, or installing machines for their proper disposal, these things were done constantly in Sikkim, and that’s why Sikkim’s all 4 districts came in India’s top 10 cleanest districts. This specialty in Sikkim’s people’s culture of cleanliness, and also their government steps. Like imposing fines on throwing trash or cigarette on roads, strictly following these things and rules, and by the cooperation of the government and people, this thing was made successful.


3. Success against rabies


The third thing is getting rid of rabies, these are around 6 crores dogs in India and 20000 people die from rabies every year, and this data was told by WHO in 2012, and this number would have increased till now, our budget for sterilization is only 3.5 crore, forgot about vaccination. But a very good program was executed in Sikkim in the last 10 years, which is called Sikkim anti-rabies and animal health, or SARAH. And many research papers have been written on that program that is how they slowly decreased the number of rabies cases in their state. This is a big success for Sikkim and a big lesson for the other states, that how they can also implement this in their states too. If you think that why you don’t know about all this about Sikkim, then this is the fault of our media houses on one level, they do not go to northeastern India and cover northern India only, where they have to invest less money and probably the clicks/views are also more. But some mistake is ours too, you can also read local news or books on your level.


4. Happiness


The next point is about happiness. Actually, there is a management development institute in Haryana, they did a survey on 16950 people, who lived in different states and duties in the country, and they tried to find out by this survey that, where are the people happiest in our country? And they got to know that Sikkim is there in the top 5 states.


5. Fully organic state

The next point is to claim to be a fully organic state, Sikkim is the first and only state which claimed to be a fully organic state in 2016. They started to make efforts for this in 2003, they launched a program named organic mission in 2010, and they finally themselves fully organic till 2015. There is a national park in Sikkim that covers most of the part of Sikkim and is also a UNESCO world heritage site, and that’s why the flora and faunas diversity is high here, and to preserve this biodiversity they decided not to use chemicals in farming but only organic products. Hence this is also happening in Sikkim which very few people will be knowing about.


6. poverty eradication

The next point is poverty eradication, Sikkim is an example for the whole world for decreasing poverty so rapidly. Sikkim has recorded the steepest fall in poverty level in the whole world. The poverty herein 2004-2005 was 30.9%, which was left only 8.19% in 2011-12. There is a 22% reduction which is very fast, in 2013 it was said that they will try to reduce the poverty more and more and in 2018, it was said that they will make this state poverty-free. And they are taking faster steps towards it and Sikkim can be the first state in the country to be completely poverty-free. And this will be an exemplary achievement but maybe you will not listen to it if you don’t try to know about these things. That’s why you should study these northeastern states.