Swachh Survekshan Awards-2023: The NDMC area was the cleanest city within Union territories while the New Delhi area also ranked third among 35 capital regions
Indore and Surat were jointly declared the cleanest cities in India in the Swachh Survekshan Awards-2023, presented by President Droupadi Murmu at the Bharat Mandapam on Thursday. This was the seventh time in a row that the Madhya Pradesh city won the accolade, and the first that Surat got the pole position, although shared.
Navi Mumbai, which came third in last year’s competition, retained its third position.
On the other end of the spectrum, three of the lowest-ranked cities in the million-plus population category were in West Bengal: Haora (Howrah) at the bottom, with Asansol and Kolkata following closely as the worst-performing cities on the cleanliness indicators. Faridabad, in Haryana, and Madurai, Tamil Nadu, were the fourth- and fifth-worst cities on the list.
The Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) was ranked 90th out of 446 cities (in the above 100,000 population category), and the New Delhi Municipal Council area secured the seventh spot (the NDMC area was ranked third in the capital cities list).
The Swachh Survekshan survey is at the centre of the Union government’s Swachh Bharat mission, which was launched as one of the big-ticket initiatives by Narendra Modi government in its first few years in power. For the eighth edition of the survey, 3,000 assessors fanned out across 4,500 cities (of these, 3,970 have a population of fewer than 100,000 people) to record a city’s performance on 46 parameters, including waste collection, inclusive toilets and improved plastic waste management.
Launching the Swachh Survekshan-2023 dashboard at the Bharat Mandapam in Delhi, President Murmu said the G20 Leaders’ Delhi Declaration committed to enhancing environmentally sound waste management, substantially reducing waste generation by 2030, and highlighting the importance of zero waste initiatives. Appreciating the theme of “Reduce, Reuse and Recycle” for the 2024 cleanliness survey, she said: “It is highly commendable that in the second phase of the Swachh Bharat Mission, circular waste management is being followed and the circular economy process of recycling and reusing more and more items is proving helpful for sustainable development.”
Union minister of housing and urban affairs, Hardeep Singh Puri, said every city in India is open-defection-free. “This became possible because the Swachh Bharat Mission went from (being) a government programme to becoming a Jan Andolan (people’s movement).”
“With a very modest beginning in 2016, today 447 cities and urban local bodies participate in the Swachh Survekshan. In this 8th edition, we received feedback from 12 crore people,” the minister said.
The NDMC area was the cleanest city within Union territories while the New Delhi area also ranked third among 35 capital regions.
Among smaller cities, with fewer than 100,000 residents, Saswad in Maharashtra got the cleanest city award followed by Patan in Chhattisgarh and Lonavala in Maharashtra.
Varanasi and Prayagraj were adjudged the cleanest Ganga towns, while Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh were adjudged the best-performing states.
Among states overall, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh were at the top, while Rajasthan, Mizoram and Arunachal Pradesh ranked at the bottom of the cleanliness standings.
Highlighting the increased waste production in the last few years, Puri said: “Cleanliness has become a social revolution and the impact can be seen everywhere. Waste processing has increased from 15-16% in 2014 to 76% in 2023. In the next 2-3 years, we will process 100% waste produced.”
The Union territory of Chandigarh was picked as the best “Safaimitra Surakshit Sheher” – a tag given to a city with adequate institutional capacity, manpower and equipment, along with safe working conditions for sanitation workers.
By March 2024, all Indian cities are supposed to be declared Safaimitra Surakshit under the ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment’s National Action for Mechanised Sanitation Ecosystem Scheme.
For 2023, the Swacch Survekshan awards were based on the theme “Waste to Wealth for Garbage-Free Cities”.
The cities this time around were marked on a total of 9,500 marks, of which 53% was based on service level progress, 26% on certification of cleanliness of public spaces and toilets and 23% based on feedback from the residents.
From being struck by the plague in 1994 to becoming the cleanest Indian city, Surat’s turnaround has been an “uphill task”. “The city faces increasing migration and industrialisation challenges”, said the city’s municipal commissioner, Shalini Agarwal. “But we integrated our infrastructure with sanitation and waste management facilities. We used our integrated command and control centre to monitor waste management. We made cleanliness a mass movement, resulting in us scoring well across all the parameters,” she said.
On the other hand, the rankings regarding Bengal cities became a point of contention. Atin Ghosh, deputy mayor of Kolkata, said: “I have not read the report myself. But if it suggests that the cities of Bengal including Kolkata are among the worst performing cities, then it suggests that the report is politically motivated. People can see for themselves when they walk around the city what’s for real.”
Bharti Chaturvedi, founder of Chintan Environmental Research and Action Group, which specialises in waste management, said the awards, besides adding healthy competition among cities and states, act as a platform for peer learning, which was previously missing. “Cities in west India, namely Indore, Surat, and Navi Mumbai, seem to be doing better than the cities to the north. In fact, the states as a whole are doing a lot better than their north-Indian counterparts. This shows that the residents of these cities engage differently, and there is a lot to learn from that. The other trend that has been consistent in the last three to four years is that smaller cities are outperforming their bigger cousins. This shows that we must take a more decentralised approach to waste management.”
