As Indians, we are all well acquainted with the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan or the Clean India Mission. It was launched in 2014 by Government of India under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The goal was to eliminate open defecation alongside improving solid waste management and public sanitation system. In fact, its slogan is “One step towards cleanliness.”&nbsp;&nbsp;



As part of the Swachh Bharat campaign, the Union Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs had launched Swachh Survekshan in 2016, that stands as the world’s largest annual urban sanitation and cleanliness survey. And this year, Indore was declared as the cleanest city as part of this survey, that too sixth time in a row. In addition, Madhya Pradesh was also revealed as the best performing state.&nbsp;



For those unaware, the first phase of the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan was completed in October 2019 and since then phase II has been initiated. Now, one of the key objectives of this second iteration (launched late last year) was to identify India’s first seven-star garbage free city and Indore bagged this accolade too. Before you start wondering whether Indore received any other award, it sure did. It was declared as the top performing city with more a million population, while Madurai secured the lowest rank. Indore’s exemplary performance was a result of proactive, sustainable, green, eco-friendly and unique measures taken by the government such as door-to-door garbage allocation, open defecation free and landfill-free initiatives, managing waste at the source and six-bin waste segregation focussing on the 3Rs, reduce, reuse and recycle.&nbsp;&nbsp;



Moreover, eleven other cities including Surat, Bhopal, Mysore, Navi Mumbai, Vishakhapatnam and Tirupati among others also earned five-star garbage free certifications under the Swachh Survekshan 2022 survey.&nbsp;&nbsp;



While Surat retained its second position for the third consecutive time, Navi Mumbai climed up a spot from fourth to third, among cities with more than 1 lakh population. Unfortunately, Agra, the home of Taj Mahal secured the bottom position in the list of top 100 cities in the category.&nbsp;&nbsp;



Interestingly, Gujarat’s Ahmedabad was declared as the cleanest megacity, while Karnataka’s Mysore was deemed as the cleanest medium city. The cleanest small city award was however grabbed by the New Delhi Municipal Council.&nbsp;



Furthermore, Rajkot was adjudged as the best self-sustainable city, while Vishakhapatnam was declared as the cleanest big city with a population ranging between 10 to 40 lakhs.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;



For states having more than a 100 Urban Local Bodies (ULBs), Chhattisgarh and Maharashtra topped the list, while Tamil Nadu performed the worst. As for the states with less than 100 ULBs, Tripura was the winner, while its neighbour Meghalaya was declared as the worst performer, two times in a row.&nbsp;&nbsp;



During the award ceremony at New Delhi earlier this week, President Draupadi Murmu lauded the efforts of sanitation workers as well as the responsible citizens who took part in the mission to keep their cities clean. She also praised the constant collaborative ventures conducted by the central and the state governments to create awareness and ensure large scale citizen participation in the Swachh Bharat Mission.&nbsp;&nbsp;



No wonder, from 73 cities in 2016, the number of participating cities has now gone up to 4354, including 62 cantonments (Deolali was the cleanest) and 91 Ganga towns (Haridwar was the cleanest).&nbsp;&nbsp;



Some of the other notable mentions include, complete mechanisation of sewer and septic tank cleaning operations, conversion of manholes into machine holes, better measures to ensure safety of sanitation workers and advanced municipal solid waste processing, that has gone up from 18 percent in 2014 to 73 percent in 2022. In this regard, Tirupati deserves a special mention as it received the best city award in the Safai Mitra Suraksha (Sanitation Worker Safety) category.&nbsp;&nbsp;



As for now, the goal of Swachh Bharat Mission 2.0 is to make all Indian cities garbage free by 2026. As a matter of fact, a three-week long campaign starting with 2nd October has been arranged by the central government to encourage people engage in proactive garbage segregation all across the country.&nbsp;&nbsp;



The survey was conducted through both direct interaction as well as digitally. While 18,17,513 feedback was received in person, over 9 crore Indians gave their feedbacks through Swachhatta app, mygov app and more. This was the first time the citizen report card venture was initiated for better authenticity.&nbsp;&nbsp;

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