No Cleanliness: On Swachh Bharat and Urban India

Seven years after launching his government’s flagship program, Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced The second phase of the Swachh Bharat Mission-Urban (SBM-U) and the Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation (AMRUT), with a new promise to make India’s cities clean. The goal that Mahatma Gandhi emphasized even a century ago, the goal of scientific waste management and complete sanitation remains largely aspirational today. Principal Economic Adviser Sanjeev Sanyal’s lament Home on dirty, deplorable cities goes the point. Urban India, in his view, is unable to compare to cities in Vietnam, which have comparable per capita income, a clear comment on the lack of urban management capabilities despite the Swachh Bharat program receiving tremendous support. SBM-U 2.0, with an outlay of ₹1.41 lakh crore, aims to focus on waste-free cities and management of urban gray and black water in locations not covered by AMRUT. In its first phase, the mission had an outstanding of ₹3,532 crore as the total allocation stood at ₹14,622 crore while the cumulative release was ₹11,090 crore. The issue of capacity and governance underscores the challenge – being able to process only one lakh tonnes of solid waste per day against 1.4 lakh tonnes generated – to transition to a circular economy that converts solid and liquid waste into resources. considers as.

Increasing community participation in resource recovery, which municipal regulations governing plastic and electronic waste provide, calls for a partnership that gives households a tangible incentive. The current model of issuing mega contracts to large corporations – as opposed to decentralized community-level operations for example – has left segregation of waste at source a non-starter. In the absence of expansion of operations, which can provide massive employment, and creation of matching facilities for material recovery, SBM-U 2.0 may not keep pace with the tide of waste in a growing economy. On sanitation, the impressive claim of exceeding targets for household, community and public toilets so far obscures the reality that without water connections, many of them are unusable, and public places are in dilapidated condition. State and municipal governments, which are heavily involved in waste and sanitation issues, should work to increase community ownership of the system. As things stand, it is a long road for urban India to Open Defecation Free Plus (ODF+) status, as it has no recorded cases of open defecation and requires all public toilets to be maintained and functioning. need to. Equally, the high ambition of achieving 100% tap water supply in about 4,700 urban local bodies and sewerage and septage in 500 AMRUT cities depends on making at least decent public rental housing accessible to millions. Is.