75 cities to be ranked on sanitation under Swachh Bharat Mission

Fifteen months after Swachh Bharat Mission was launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the Ministry of Urban Development has decided to study and rank 75 cities based on sanitation and cleanliness, while also co-opting the public to give its feedback.

The task of executing the mission, named "Swachh Survekshan", has been entrusted with the Quality Council of India, and will cover all state capitals and 53 other cities, involving three streams of data collection - citizen feedback, municipality self-evaluation and independent assessment.

"Swachh Survekshan is the very first survey commissioned by us since the launch of Swachh Bharat Mission on October 2, 2014," said Praveen Prakash, mission director and joint secretary in the Ministry of Urban Development.

"We want data from the ground to measure the impact of the mission year-on-year".

Accordingly, the work will be evaluated under six measurable aspects of sanitation and hygiene:

- Strategies to stop open defecation and integrate the city's solid waste management sytems

- Efficacy of eommunication strategies on information, education and behaviour change

- Effectiveness of systems for sweeping, door-to-door collections and transportation of waste

- Efficiency in processing and disposal of waste

- How good is deployment of public and community toilets

- Progress made in construction of household individual toilets.

In fact, one of the stated objectives of Swachh Bharat Mission is to ensure door-to-door garbage collection and a proper disposal of municipal solid waste in all the 83,000 wards in urban areas by 2019.

"Swachh Survekshan will help us assess the level of cleanliness in 75 cities and simultaneously foster a spirit of healthy competition between the cities," said Adil Zainulbhai, chairman of the quality council.

"The success of Swachh Survekshan depends on the involvement of the municipalities and citizens of 75 cities. The Quality Council of India invites involvement of citizens and municipalities to make this survey a success."

A base-year pre survey was conducted across 476 cities before the launch of the mission. This will be tallied with the latest round the findings as on December last year in each of the 75 designated cities. The results are to be announced on 25 Januaryon the MyGov website.

The quality council has deployed a team of 110 assessors, most of them engineers, to conduct the survey who will visit all the 75 cities and their respective municipalities. To prevent ay bias, comprehensive training sessions were also organised.