A little over three years ago, I spent a day in Jharkhand’s Khunti district. The reason for my trip didn’t have anything to do with sanitation – I was there to talk about self-help groups – but, as often happens when I’m in India, the topic of toilets kept coming up.

Anywhere people live without access to safe sanitation systems, there is a measurable impact on their lives and communities. Waste-borne illnesses contribute to the deaths of millions of children every year and leave millions more with lifelong consequences like stunting. The combined costs of death and dis-ease and lost opportunity due to inadequate sanitation robs India of more than $106 billion annually.

The hamlet I visited had experienced these challenges first-hand. At the time of my trip, the people living there were still practising open defecation. However, a few of the women in the self-help group told me that was about to change. They had just learned about Swachh Bharat and were in the process of applying for their first toilets. Their hamlet was about to become a part of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ambitious vision for making India open defecation free by October 2 next year.

Already, India has proven that incredible progress is possible. In 2014, when Swachh Bharat began, only 42% of Indians had access to proper sanitation. Today, that number has more than doubled. The country has built more than 85 million toilets, and 21 states have been declared open defecation free.

But new toilets are only one part of the sanitation revolution Swachh Bharat is driving. Another crucial component is Swachh Bharat’s focus on building systems to safely and effectively dispose of waste. As part of this broad effort, Andhra Pradesh, Odisha, Telangana, Tamil Nadu, and Uttar Pradesh are supporting the construction of faecal sludge treatment plants, a key link in the chain of safe sanitation.

While these are important steps in the right direction, it’s also true that more innovation is needed. Sewer systems are expensive to build, use massive amounts of water, and require constant, costly maintenance. That’s why, since 2013, our foundation, together with the science and technology ministry, has invited engineers and entrepreneurs to participate in our Reinvent the Toilet Challenge, which calls on innovators to offer ideas for sustainable sanitation solutions that work without sewers, electricity or running water.

In response to this challenge, we’ve seen developments across multiple categories of innovation that have the potential to be transformative. Examples include reinvented toilets currently being field tested in Tamil Nadu and an “omni processor” which converts waste into fertilizer, green energy and even potable water. This week, ministers of water and sanitation from around the world are meeting at the Mahatma Gandhi International Sanitation Convention to discuss these and other technologies – and to learn from India’s example.

For countries currently lacking sanitation infrastructure, Indian innovation holds the promise of billions of dollars and millions of lives saved. For countries still relying on inefficient sewer systems, solutions developed in India have the potential to become the new gold standard.

Another reason for Swachh Bharat’s successes is that the country is combining toilet and waste treatment technologies with community mobilisation. Sanitation initiatives often fail when they focus only on building new infrastructure or on changing human behaviour. India is succeeding because it addresses both. Swachh Bharat has enlisted Bollywood stars, cricket players and everyday ambassadors to amplify the same safe sanitation messages brandished everywhere from public toilets to giant billboards to the currency that passes through their hands. The data proves that Indians are responding, and that Swachh Bharat is truly a people’s movement.

That is also the case for the families I met in Khunti. I’m told that, by 2016, every home in the hamlet had a toilet of its own. While the area doesn’t yet have piped water, both men and women are now in the habit of carrying water to the toilets – even though carrying water was once a chore reserved for women. This break with tradition reflects an increasingly widespread belief that a clean India is everyone’s business, and that toilets make life better not only for women and girls but for all of us.