Not so clean

Not so clean

Indore, Bhopal and Visakhapatnam are India’s cleanest cities, according to the Union Ministry of Urban Development’s Swachh Survekshan Report. There is much to cheer about these top rankers — and many worries about the under-achievers. But the significance of this cleanliness ranking, released to mark two and a half years of the Swachh Bharat Mission, goes beyond the performance of individual cities. The participation of 434 cities in a survey which ranked them on the basis of cleanliness is heartening for a country that has long despaired over the filth in its urban centres. Only 76 cities had participated in a similar endeavour last year. There is much in the Swachh Survekshan Report that shows urban India’s keenness to spruce up — nearly 300 cities have provisions for door-to-door waste collection and 118 cities are open-defecation free.
These impressive factoids should not, however, blinker us to the Report’s omissions. Its ranking methodology does not incentivise sustainable waste disposal. The top performing states, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh, have made big strides in door-to-door waste collection. But what they do with the garbage remains problematic. These states have, by and large, done away with the environmentally hazardous practice of having a landfill at every 50-60 km. But their practice of transporting waste from contiguous areas to comparatively bigger landfills or treating them at processing plants does not represent much of an improvement. Indore, India’s cleanest city, has involved resident welfare associations in its waste collection projects. But this intervention has not extended to sorting out, at source, the garbage’s biodegradable, non-biodegradable and recyclable components. This means treatment plants processing the city’s waste continue to be burdened with unsegregated garbage — like most such plants in the country, they struggle to treat the waste in an efficient and environment-friendly manner.
The Solid Waste Management Rules, framed last year, emphasise that 50 per cent of the biodegradable waste in Indian cities could be turned into compost at the local level, without burdening landfills and garbage treatment plants. The rules also reiterate a point stressed in much of the literature on solid waste management — 25 per cent to 35 per cent of India’s waste can be recycled. The Swachh Survekshan Report, in comparison, is a bit of a climbdown. It must correct the glitches in its next endeavour.