Swachh Survekshan 2016

• Swachh Survekshan-2016 was a sanitation survey conducted by the Ministry of Urban Development under the Swachh Bharat Mission comissioned in october 2015

• The survey was conducted in 75 major cities, including 53 with a population of above 10 lakh each and State capitals. Since Kolkata and Noida will participate in the next round, the ranking this year is for 73 cities.
• Mysuru has emerged as the country’s cleanest city followed by Chandigarh and Tiruchi. New Delhi Municipal Council came in fourth while Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s constituency Varanasi was ranked 65th among 73 cities. Dhanbad was at the bottom of the ladder
• The survey was “more participatory and evidence based” as all the featured cities were informed two months in advance about the methodology. Cities were asked them to put in place records of their efforts in support of infrastructure creation, deployment of men and machines, improvements made, expenditure, etc,
• In a year-long survey, the researchers studied 476 first-tier cities with two parameters: one, how ‘minimal’ open defecation was in the city; two, how robust the municipalities were with the solid waste management system.
• Out of the total marks of 2,000 for assessing the performance of efforts of 73 cities, 60 per cent were assigned for solid waste management related parameters, 30 per cent for construction of toilets and 5 per cent each for city level sanitation strategy and behaviour change communication.
• The Quality Council of India had conducted the survey by deploying 25 teams which visited 42 locations in each city

Analysis

• Mysuru had also topped the last cleanliness survey which was conducted in 2014 among 476 cities with a population of one lakh and above each. This was commissioned by the Ministry under the National Sanitation Policy 2008, before the launch of Swachh Bharat Mission.
• Based on the comparison of the marks and ranks of the two surveys, Cities from South and West continue to do well over all but those in other parts of the country
• Of the cities surveyed, 32 have improved ranks since the last survey including 17 from the North. This is a clear evidence of enhanced efforts being made by the northern cities towards sanitation and new cities challenging the domination of cities from the South and the West.

Swachh Bharat Mission : aimed at ensuring

Door-to-door collection, transportation and scientific disposal of municipal solid waste –  all the 83,000 wards in urban areas by 2019

Construction of one crore household individual toilets and over five lakh public and community toilet seats.