The Union Government has launched the Swachh Survekshan cleanliness survey for 2018 as part of the Swachh Bharat Mission.
- The Swachh Survekshan 2018 will rank cities and there will be two categories of ranking. 50 cities with more than 1 lakh population will have National Ranking whereas 3541 cities with a population of less than 1 lakh will have State and Regional ranking.
- The Minister of State (I/C) for Housing and Urban Affairs, Shri Hardeep Puri has informed that the focus of Swachh Survekshan 2018 has shifted from the process and output based indicators to the indicators focussing on outcome and sustainability. He mentioned that Swachh Survekshan is the largest survey impacting more than 40 crore urban population.
- With the introduction of this scheme, it’s aimed to move forward to a cleaner India.
Swachh Survekshan
- To encourage cities to improve urban sanitization, the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs had conducted the “Swachh Survekshan” survey in 2016 ranking 73 cities. Mysore got the tag of the cleanest city of India that year. It was followed by the Swachh Survekshan survey in 2017 ranking 434 cities in which Indore got the tag of the cleanest city.
- The objective of this survey is to encourage large-scale citizen participation and create awareness among all sections of the society about the importance of working together toward making the town and cities a better place to live in. It also intends to foster a spirit of healthy competition among towns and cities to improve their service delivery to citizens towards creating cleaner cities.
The survey attempts to capture the progress in six broad parameters-
- Collection and Transportation of Municipal Solid Waste to ensure that segregated dry and wet waste is collected daily from the households and our public areas clean.
- Processing and Disposal of Municipal Solid Waste to encourage cities to process their waste and wherever possible recycle the dry waste.
- Sanitation-related progress to verify whether city is ODF (Open Defecation Free) with access to toilets available for citizens.
- IEC (Information, Education and Communication)- Whether cities have started campaigns promoting Swachh Survekshan, engaging citizens in waste management, maintenance of community and Public Toilets etc.
- Capacity Building to access whether officials in the ULBs were provided sufficient opportunities to attend trainings and go for exposure visits.
- Innovation and Best Practices- This component has been introduced first time in this survey to encourage cities to come forward and share their best practices in Swachh Bharat Mission.
