The Swachh Survekshan 2017 has found Indore and Bhopal to be the cleanest cities in the country with Visakhapatnam adjudged the third cleanest. Uttar Pradesh’s Gonda has been ranked last; just one city from the most populous state has figured in the top 100. Madhya Pradesh has a record number of 23 cities in the top 100; Gujarat comes close with 21 of cities ranked among the top. Last year’s topper Mysuru has dropped to the fifth spot this year. All 434 cities across the country were ranked based on their cleanliness quotient across five categories which included waste collection, solid waste management, behavior change communication, toilet construction and strategies to improve sanitation.
The New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC) which was among the top five cleanest cities in the last edition of the Swachh Survekshan has been ranked seventh this year. It has been adjudged as the best in the country’s North Zone. NDMC houses just three percent of Delhi’s population while the rest are split between three municipal corporations. Areas falling under the NDMC’s jurisdiction have been declared open defecation-free by the Union Urban Development Ministry; the council has been actively encouraging 100 percent source segregation in addition to ensuring door-to-door garbage collection and constructing public toilets.
From being ranked the seventh cleanest city in the country in 2015, Bengaluru has slipped to the 210th position in the latest round of the Swachh Survekshan. The metropolis occupied the 51st position among 72 cities housing a population of over 10 lakh. Though waste processing has been one of Bengaluru’s fortes, non-implementation and misuse of existing infrastructure have been cited as one of the main reasons for Bengaluru’s steep drop in the Swachh ladder. All six of Bengaluru’s compost-based waste processing plants were found to be dysfunctional during the survey and the city ended up scoring a zero in the category. Lack of adequate dustbins in public places and the inability to free itself from open defecation seem to have cost the city dearly.
Cities in Tamil Nadu have fared rather badly in this Swachh Survekshan with just Tiruchirapalli figuring in the top 10, scoring 1,716 out of 2,000 points, well above the state and the national average. While Madurai was ranked 51, Chennai city’s rank plummeted down to an abysmal 235 from last year’s 36th rank. The inadequate waste collection, poor solid waste processing and lack of adequate public toilets were some of Chennai’s main disadvantages. With just three cities making it to the survey rankings last year, Gujarat has managed to turn things around with 31 of its cities making it to the 2017 list. While Surat is ranked fourth, Vadodara is placed 10th and Ahmedabad 14th in the pan-India survey. The state has achieved an impressive sanitation coverage of 75 percent with 5000 of its villages expected to be declared open defecation free by the end of 2017.
In a bid to improve the implementation efficiency of the Swachh Bharat Mission, the union government is all set to establish the Rashtriya Swachhata Kendra, a monitoring centre of sorts at Rajghat, New Delhi. The centre will be set up by the Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation. The Swachh Bharat Mission continues to occupy a position of priority in the current dispensation with a budget allocation of Rs 19,300 crore with a central share of Rs 14,000 crore.
This is a roundup of important sanitation related news published between April 29 and May 5, 2016.