Indore Replaces Mysuru As Cleanest City In India; Know About The Other Cities On This Year's List

The Union Ministry of Urban Development (MoUD) has released the rankings of the annual ‘Swachh Survekshan 2017’ survey, which ranks cities on the basis of cleanliness.

Swachh Survekshan 2017 was commissioned by the Ministry of Urban Development. It is aimed at capturing the improvement in sanitation scenario, primarily based on making cities and towns open defecation-free, and improvement in processing of municipal solid waste. Accordingly, it is outcome-oriented.

Key findings

• Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, and Andhra Pradesh account for 31 of the top 50 clean cities, with 12 in Gujarat, 11 in MP and 8 in AP.
• Telangana and Tamil Nadu account for 4 cities each in top 50, followed by Maharashtra with 3.
• Chandigarh, Chattisgarh, Delhi, HP, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Sikkim, and UP account for one city each in top 50 clean cities of the country.
• While 14 States/UTs find a place among the top 50 clean cities, competition is less for a place in bottom 50, with UP alone accounting for 25 of the bottom 50 towns.
• Rajasthan and Punjab have 5 towns each in the bottom 50, followed by Maharashtra (2), and one each from Haryana, Karnataka and Lakshadweep.
• Out of the 62 cities and towns surveyed in UP in 2017, 41 of them figure among the bottom 100 cities/towns.

10 cleanest cities of India

6 of the top 10 clean cities of 2017 – Indore, Bhopal, Visakhapatnam, Surat, Tirupati, and Vadodara – have improved their sanitation rankings in 2017 over the 2016 and 2014 rankings.

10 least clean cities of India

Four of the bottom 10 cities are from UP, two each from Bihar and Punjab, and one each from Uttarakhand and Maharashtra.

Major success stories

While Gujarat, MP, and Andhra Pradesh continued their good work scoring well in Sanitation Rankings, Jharkhand and Chattisgarh emerged as the major success stories, given sanitation levels in 2016 and 2014, with substantial improvement.

While all the 9 cities/towns of Jharkhand surveyed in 2017 have substantially improved their rankings over that of 2016 and 2014, 7 of 8 in Chattisgarh have achieved this feat.

Criteria involved in formulating the list

The survey was conducted by the Quality Council of India. The Council deployed 421 assessors for on-the-spot assessment of 17,500 locations in 434 cities and towns. Another 55 persons regularly monitored the survey process in real time.

Furthermore, field inspection resulted in evidence-based reports on the cleanliness situation with assessors using geo-tagged devices.

Criteria and weightages for different components of sanitation related aspects used for the survey were:

• Solid Waste Management including Door-to-Door collection, Processing and Disposal, ODF status etc.: 45% of total 2,000 marks.
• Citizen feedback: 30% of total marks.
• Independent observation: 25% of total marks.

The objectives of the Swachh Bharat Mission

Prime Minister Narendra Modi green-lighted the Swachh Bharat Mission on 2nd October 2014. The Mission laid a roadmap for improving the level of sanitation and cleanliness in the country with a vision to create a Clean India by 2019, the 150th birth year of Mahatma Gandhi.

Objectives of the mission include:

• Elimination of open defecation;
• Eradication of manual scavenging;
• Modern and Scientific Municipal Solid Waste Management;
• To effect behavioral change regarding healthy sanitation practices;
• Generate awareness about sanitation and its linkage with public health;
• Capacity Augmentation for Urban Local Bodies (ULB);
• To create an enabling environment for private sector participation in Capex (capital expenditure) and Opex (operation and maintenance).