‘Amusement Park’ in the ‘dirtiest town’ of Northeast!

October 4: When on one hand, Silchar Municipal Board (SMB) is burning their midnight oil to get a state-of-the-art Amusement Park, star hotel and shopping complex in Gandhi Bagh ignoring the voice of a large section of the populace, on the otherhand, social media and newspapers are severely criticising the SMB for Silchar getting the rank of the dirtiest city in Northeast.

According to the Swachh Survekshan 2019, Silchar in Assam became infamously famous for being ranked as the dirtiest city of Northeast and third dirtiest city/town of India. This was a sample survey. Out of 425 cities taken in the sample, Silchar got the position of 423. The awards were adjudged category-wise, the categories earmarked on the basis of total population of the cities/towns surveyed. The awards were presented by the President, Shri Ram Nath Kovind at a function in New Delhi on 6 March, 2019.

Indore  has been awarded the cleanest city in the country in the Swachh Survekshan 2019 (SS 2019) awards while Bhopal has been declared as the cleanest capital. Ujjain has bagged the award for being the cleanest city in the population category of 3 lakh to 10 lakh. Swachh Survekshan 2019 has seen several innovations and best practices emerging from the cities. Through a mix of innovative thinking, technological interventions and active stakeholder engagement, cities have found novel ways to address issues of sanitation and waste management in their areas.

The Ministry of Urban Development, Government of India, and the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) of India, annually publish National City Rating under the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan scheme. India was divided into five zones for the purpose of this survey and each city was scored on 19 indicators. The cities were classified into four colours: green, blue, black, and red, green being the cleanest city, and red the most polluted. The latest ranking of 2019 by Swachh Bharat Abhiyan announced Indore as the cleanest cities in India for a third time.

The performance of each city was evaluated on five key thematic parameters-

• Municipal solid waste – sweeping, collection and transportation
• Municipal solid waste – processing and disposal of solid waste
• Open defecation free/toilets
• Capacity building and e-Learning
• Provision of public & community toilet seats
• Information, education and communication, and behaviour change

During a programme of Solid and Liquid Resource Management (SLRM) on Wednesday, Silchar MP Dr. Rajdeep Roy publicly expressed displeasure at some media reports where it was pointed out that Silchar ranked very low in terms of cleanliness. He said that such a state of affairs cannot be allowed to continue and some positive interference needs to be done at the earliest.

Social media too is replete with statements from people from every walk of life wherein they have largely stated that the Silchar Municipal Board (SMB) whose prime duty is to maintain the cleanliness of the town “is otherwise busy in collaborating with builders in eradicating the green and erecting concrete structures in its place threby neglecting their basic duty for which they were elected.”

MoHUA conducted its first survey ‘Swachh Survekshan-2016’ survey for ranking 73 cities (Urban Local Bodies), in January 2016, under the ambit of the Swachh Bharat Mission (Urban).  In order to expand the coverage of cities, the Ministry conducted its second survey ‘Swachh Survekshan-2017’ in January-February 2017, to rank 434 cities. ‘Swachh Survekshan 2018’ saw a massive increase in both scale of survey and intensity of participation, with 4,203 cities covered in last year’s survey.

Swachh Survekshan 2019 has scaled even greater heights, covering 4,237 cities, and that too, in a record time of 28 days, in a completely paperless, digital format for data collection! Moreover, even in this short span of time, assessors managed to visit nearly 73,000 wards, 21,000 commercial areas, 69,000 residential areas, 75,000 community/public toilets, and more than 3100 waste to compost plants across the country.