1. Lack of universal sanitation coverage has been a cause for concern since India's independence. Even during a time, when nutritional and health indicators were tracking progress, sanitation's own progress curve grew sluggishly. The negative implications of open defecation were widely accepted at the time, but many acknowledged that there were also structural forces such as entrenched social norms, power dynamics within social strata, and gender-exclusive taboos that influenced the uptake of healthy sanitation practices and private investment in the related behaviour, markets, and goods. This meant that even during the 1970s and 80s, when national vaccine programmes were experiencing a relatively high rate of coverage; sanitation coverage was averaging a growth rate of 1 per cent annually. At that rate, it would take India until 2080 to achieve universal sanitation access, and that is assuming a no population growth.
With reference to the above passage, the following assumptions have been made:
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