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Indore was awarded as the cleanest city in India for the sixth consecutive time. While Surat and Navi Mumbai are the third cleanest city, while NDMC, which is home to the most powerful people in the county, fell to the ninth position in 2022. NDMC was fifth cleanest city last year and 8th in 2020.
In the Best Performing States category at the 'Swachh Survekshan Awards 2022', Madhya Pradesh secured the top position, followed by Chhattisgarh and Maharashtra.
Indore and Surat maintained their top positions in the big city category this year, while Vijaywada lost its third-place finish to Navi Mumbai.
Among states with fewer than 100 urban local agencies, Tripura has ranked highest, according to the survey results.
President Droupadi Murmu presented the prizes to the winners at an event in New Delhi on Saturday. Union Minister for Housing and Urban Affairs Hardeep Singh Puri, among others, attended the event.
In the category of cities with a population of less than one lakh, Maharashtra's Panchgani ranked number one, followed by Chhattisgarh's Patan (NP) and Maharashtra's Karhad.
Haridwar was awarded as the cleanest Ganga city in the over 1 lakh population category, followed by Varanasi and Rishikesh.
Bijnor was ranked first among Ganga cities with less than one lakh population followed by Kannauj and Garhmukhteshwar respectively. In the survey, Deolali from Maharashtra was awarded the cleanest Cantonment Board in the country.
The 7th edition of Swachh Survekshan was held to study the progress of the Swachh Bharat (Urban) Mission and rank Urban Local Bodies (ULBs) based on various cleanliness and sanitation parameters.
How Indore became the cleanest city
Indore is the largest and most populous city in Madhya Pradesh. Its sanitation infrastructure, garbage segregation and its formula of "reduce, reuse and recycle" had contributed significantly to Indore becoming the cleanest city in India. To prevent vehicle owners from littering, Malini Gaur, Mayor of Indore, personally distributed around 1,200 car bins.
Smart Cities have repeatedly received awards and accolades for their sustainable development, urban planning and cleanliness. Receptive and actively involved citizens as well as active participation, smart planning and incentives from the civic body have set an example for many others in the success of Indore as a clean and smart city.
“Due to political and administrative will, the city has become the cleanest city in the country,” Swati Singh Sambyal, program manager for waste management at the Center for Science and Environment (CSE), a Delhi-based non-profit, told IndiaSpend. "The city has certainly solved almost 90% of its solid waste challenge."
At the same time, IMC imposed a system of rewards and punishments; Those who litter public spaces would be condemned and those who managed their waste efficiently would be praised. This instilled a sense of fear and shame among the bugs and motivated people to keep their surroundings clean.
The city's municipal cleanliness drive took the first step in 2017, with hundreds of municipal vehicles collecting garbage from homes across the city, which was sent to transport hubs and from there to trenching grounds.. Garbage was collected from residential areas once a day and from commercial areas twice.
The sanitation workers cleaned the streets at night. Municipal Corporation has its own theme song sung by singer Shaan called "Swachhta Aadat Hai, Swachhta Utsav Hai".
A city is considered to be truly clean if it meets the following five criteria:
- 100% sewerage system.
- 100% solid waste management system.
- Effective drainage system with water harvesting of rain runoff
- Paving or mowing rough surfaces between roadsides and building lines
- Daily cleaning of roads and streets to ensure zero spread of solid waste.
- Maintenance expenditure.
- Paving of streets.
Sweep work
The corporation has employed 8,500 sweepers for the entire city except for the widest streets. Road sweeping is done with the help of motorized vehicles operated by a subcontracted agency. Sweeping in commercial areas is done three times a day, while sweeping in residential areas is done once a day.
The growth of bushes of different species on top of road medians offers a kaleidoscopic sight. The great army of street sweepers is led by safai darogas, sanitary inspectors and health officers. The control room team performs monitoring and coordination through the online system.
A well-planned program
Financing is essential in any plan that is executed for the well-being of people. Indore was willing to spend more than Rs 100 million on sanitation and solid waste management solutions.
In addition, it was helped by the high amounts of fines collected from wayward residents and the sale of organic compost. There are many additional sources of income, such as collecting money from residents based on the amount of waste generated.
Is Indore really cleanest city?
- Point-by-point preparation of the various aspects considered in the cleanup survey that included garbage collection, public health, public restrooms, individual domestic restrooms, and waste disposal/recycling and reuse.
- Various teams were divided up for separate jobs and were supervised on a day-to-day basis by the top officials. The health officers, deputy commissioners, additional commissioners, chief sanitary inspectors, and the entire engineering team were all working toward one main goal; making Indore one of the cleanest cities in India.
- The biggest challenge in 2017 was making Indore Open Defecation Free (O.D.F.), which was successfully achieved in the same year and played a major role in Indore gaining the rank.
- Excavation/landfill site where waste collected from all over the city, both dry and wet (organic) is dumped was analyzed and plans were planned to be executed to prepare world-class organic compost from the wet waste collected from kitchens.
- Similarly, several individual ragpickers were hired to separate the dry waste into different categories, including paper, plastic bottles, leather, cotton waste, etc.
Cleanest city in India
- Indore
- Surat
- Navi Mumbai
- Visakhapatnam
- Vijayawada
- Bhopal
- Tirupati
- Mysuru
- NDMC
- Ambikapu
What is Swachh Survekshan?
Swachh Survekshan is the world's largest urban cleanliness and sanitation survey, conducted by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs since 2016.
Swachh Survekshan is an annual survey of cleanliness, hygiene and sanitation in cities and towns in India. It was launched as part of the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, which aimed to make India clean and free of open defecation by October 2, 2019.
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