Loading…
Dr Jitendra Singh, Union Minister of State (Independent Charge) for Earth Sciences, launched the fifth edition of 'Swachh Sagar, Surakshit Sagar 2026: SSSS v.5.0' on 1 September 2026.
The campaign will run as a week-long nationwide observance from 12 to 19 September 2026, with beach clean-up drives at over 100 locations, a human chain, cycling rallies, marathons, an ocean conservation pledge and the first-ever national Ocean Olympiad for students and youth.
The Minister launched the SSSS v.5.0 website, the official ocean conservation pledge, an introductory video and an activities-schedule video, alongside the Sagar Prahari mobile app; India's coastline was cited as spanning over 11,000 km.
Separately, the Ministry of Earth Sciences launched the 'MoES Foundation Day Quiz: Advancing Earth Sciences, Empowering the Nation' with MyGov to mark 20 years of the Ministry - 100 multiple-choice questions in 300 seconds, one attempt per participant, with cash prizes of Rs 10,000 each for three randomly selected all-correct entries.
Raise public awareness of marine litter and mobilise citizens, students, coastal communities and volunteer organisations to clean India's beaches and protect its ocean environment.
Key: First run in 2022 as a 75-day campaign from 3 July, covering 75 beaches and culminating on International Coastal Cleanup Day, 17 September 2022; it has since become an annual observance, and the fifth edition in 2026 is a week-long programme from 12 to 19 September at over 100 locations.
Develop technologies for deep-sea mining, deep-ocean survey and exploration of living and non-living resources, ocean climate advisory services and offshore energy, supporting the Blue Economy.
Key: A central sector scheme of the Ministry of Earth Sciences approved by the Cabinet in September 2021 with an outlay of about Rs 4,077 crore over five years; the Minister cited it as the inspiration behind the campaign's scale.
Send a three-member crew to a depth of 6,000 metres in an indigenously developed manned submersible - India's first crewed deep-ocean mission.
Key: A project under the Deep Ocean Mission, with the Matsya 6000 submersible being developed by the National Institute of Ocean Technology, Chennai.
Build ocean literacy among students and young people by testing and rewarding knowledge of ocean science and conservation.
Key: Launched for the first time as part of SSSS v.5.0 in 2026, with online registration through the campaign's dedicated portal.
Created in 2006 by bringing meteorological, oceanographic, seismological and polar research agencies under one umbrella; it traces its lineage to the Department of Ocean Development set up in the early 1980s, which was elevated to a ministry and then reorganised as MoES. Its Foundation Day is observed on 27 July - the 18th was marked in 2024, so 2026 completes 20 years.
Autonomous institute under MoES established in November 1993 to develop indigenous technology for harvesting living and non-living resources in India's Exclusive Economic Zone; it is developing the Matsya 6000 submersible and hosts the Swachh Sagar campaign portal.
Established on 25 May 1998 as the National Centre for Antarctic and Ocean Research, it is India's nodal agency for polar and Southern Ocean research and logistics. It operates the Antarctic stations Maitri (1989) and Bharati (2012) and the Arctic station Himadri.
India's national meteorological service, formed on 15 January 1875 and brought under MoES in 2006; it issues weather forecasts, cyclone warnings and the monsoon outlook. Its headquarters moved from Calcutta to Shimla in 1905, to Pune in 1928 and to Delhi in 1944.
Autonomous body under MoES providing ocean information and advisory services - potential fishing zone advisories, ocean state forecasts and tsunami early warning - to fishers, industry, government agencies and researchers.
MoES institute set up in 2018, succeeding the Integrated Coastal and Marine Area Management Project Directorate; it works on coastal processes, shoreline erosion, marine pollution including litter, ecosystem modelling and coastal vulnerability assessment - the scientific base for a campaign like Swachh Sagar.
Most marine litter is land-based: plastic, packaging and fishing gear that reaches the sea through rivers, drains and beaches rather than being dumped mid-ocean. Once in the water it fragments into microplastics, enters the food chain through fish and shellfish, entangles marine life and settles into sediment, where it is effectively unrecoverable. That is why the intervention point is the shoreline - a beach clean-up removes litter at the last stage at which removal is still cheap and possible, and the data recorded during clean-ups on what is collected feeds back into policy on single-use plastics and waste management. International Coastal Cleanup Day, observed globally on the third Saturday of September, is the fixed point in that calendar; India's first Swachh Sagar campaign in 2022 was deliberately built to culminate on it, and subsequent editions have stayed in the same September window. The Government frames the campaign under Jan Bhagidari - people's participation - because a state agency cannot police thousands of kilometres of coast, but citizens who have physically cleaned a beach tend to stop littering it.
Simple Analogy: It is the difference between mopping a floor and closing the tap. The clean-up is the mopping; the awareness and pledge campaign wrapped around it is what is meant to close the tap.
Swachh Sagar sits at the awareness end of a chain that runs through NCCR's coastal pollution research, INCOIS's advisory services, the Deep Ocean Mission's resource exploration and Samudrayaan's crewed dive - all under one ministry, which is why MoES questions often ask you to place an institute correctly.
National coastal clean-ups feed the same policy debate as India's ban on identified single-use plastic items and the ongoing international negotiations for a global instrument on plastic pollution, where land-to-sea leakage is the central issue.
The MoES quiz is hosted on MyGov, the same platform the NHRC used for its Human Rights Quiz 2026 on the same day - a recurring pattern of ministries using MyGov for citizen engagement around anniversaries and observance days.
GS Paper 3 > Environment: Conservation and Pollution; Science and Technology
General Awareness > Government Campaigns and Important Days
General Awareness > Current Affairs: Schemes and Campaigns
MoES institutions, the Deep Ocean Mission and named cleanliness campaigns recur in UPSC Prelims environment and science questions and in SSC general awareness almost every cycle.
Any persistent, manufactured or processed solid material discarded or lost in the marine and coastal environment; predominantly land-based in origin.
People's participation - the framing used for government campaigns that depend on mass voluntary action rather than administrative enforcement.
The zone extending up to 200 nautical miles from the baseline, within which a coastal state has sovereign rights over living and non-living resources.
The sustainable use of ocean resources for economic growth, livelihoods and jobs while preserving the health of ocean ecosystems.
A global observance held on the third Saturday of September, on which volunteers clean coastlines and record what they collect.