Shri Hardeep S Puri, MoS(I/C), Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs awarded Swachh Survekshan 2020, the fifth edition of the annual cleanliness urban survey conducted by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA), Government of India at a virtual event titled Swachh Mahotsav. While Indore won the coveted title of the Cleanest City of India, Surat and Navi Mumbai won the second and third position respectively. Chhattisgarh was designated as the Cleanest State of India in the > 100 ULB category while Jharkhand was adjudged the Cleanest State of India in the <100 ULB category.
The Minister also interacted with select beneficiaries of household toilets, SafaiKarmis or sanitation workers, informal waste pickers and members of self-help groups associated with the Swachh Bharat Mission-Urban (SBM-U) from across the country.
Addressing the winners and citizens at large, the Minister said “More than five years ago, the Hon’ble Prime Minister had seen a dream – the dream of a Swachh Bharat. Today, we feel immensely proud, as well as humbled, to see how every citizen of urban India have come together to make that dream a tangible reality. In the last five years, we have seen how this Mission has created a deep impact on people’s health, livelihoods, quality of life and most importantly, in their thoughts and their behaviour”.
Speaking about the genesis of what has become the world’s largest urban sanitation survey, Shri Puri explained, “When the Swachh Bharat Mission- Urban (SBM-U) was launched in 2014, it was with the objective of making urban India 100% open defecation free (ODF) along with 100% scientific solid waste management. With no concept of ODF in urban areas and solid waste processing standing at a mere 18%, it was clear that an accelerated approach was necessary if the Hon’ble Prime Minister’s dream of a Swachh India was to be achieved within the timeframe of five years. A framework was therefore needed to bring about rigour in the progress in monitoring and a spirit of healthy competition amongst states and cities to improve their performance in key cleanliness parameters. It was this underlying thought that led to the conceptualization and subsequent implementation of Swachh Survekshan (SS), a competitive framework to encourage cities to improve the status of urban sanitation while encouraging large scale citizen participation.”
With noteworthy progress being made in the past six years under SBM-U, the Minister outlined the vision for the next phase of the Mission, “ Our efforts going forward will be on safe containment, transportation and disposal of faecal sludge and septage from toilets, and also the grey and black water from households and establishments. Along with this, the treatment of all wastewater before discharging into water bodies, and their maximum possible re-use will also be our priority. Alongside, I am also concerned about the safety of our sanitation workers, our frontline warriors in this ‘Kranti’. Therefore, provision of adequate safety gear and mechanized equipment to all sanitation workers will be paid maximum attention in the next phase of the Mission.”
Speaking at the occasion, Shri Durga Shanker Mishra, Secretary, MoHUA said, “MoHUA had conducted Swachh Survekshan 2016 survey for the rating of 73 cities in January 2016, followed by Swachh Survekshan 2017 conducted in January-February 2017 ranking 434 cities. Swachh Survekshan 2018, which became the world’s largest cleanliness survey, ranked 4203 cities followed by SS 2019 which not only covered 4237 cities but was also the first of its kind completely digital survey completed in a record time of 28 days. Swachh Survekshan 2020 continued the momentum and surveyed a total of 4242 cities, 62 Cantonment Boards and 97 Ganga Towns and saw an unprecedented participation of 1.87 crore citizens. Going a step forward, to ensure sustainability of on-ground performance of cities, the Ministry had also introduced Swachh Survekshan League last year, a quarterly cleanliness assessment of cities and towns done in three quarters with 25% weightage integrated into the final Swachh Survekshan results for this year. Moreover, the dynamic nature of the Swachh Survekshan framework has also evolved continuously. From being just a monitoring framework for measuring outcomes, Swachh Survekshan has become an implementation accelerator for SBM-Urban, enabling sustainability of outcomes by institutionalizing ‘Swachhata”.
Durga Shanker Mishra further added, “Swachh Survekshan 2020 had an overwhelming scale with the survey team visiting over 58,000 residential and over 20,000 commercial areas covering over 64,000 wards in a mere 28 days”.