Q1.
Indore in Madhya Pradesh has been awarded the cleanest city in India under the Swachh Survekshan government scheme for seven years in a row. What could have been the role of Indore citizens in this achievement?
Answer
The award went to the city, but no corporation can sweep a city clean on its own. Indore’s record was possible because lakhs of ordinary households changed what they do every single morning. That is the whole answer, and here is what it looks like in practice.
- They separated their waste at home. Wet kitchen waste in one bin, dry waste in another, and in Indore even further into more streams. This is the single habit on which everything else rests — mixed waste cannot be composted or recycled, so it goes to a dump.
- They handed waste to the collection vehicle instead of throwing it out. When a vehicle comes down the lane every day and every family waits for it, the street bins disappear — and with them the smell, the stray animals and the roadside heaps.
- They stopped using the street as a bin. No throwing from a moving vehicle, no dumping in an empty plot, no spitting, no littering after a function. This is a change of habit, not of technology.
- They accepted rules and fines, and paid the user charge. A cleanliness system costs money and needs discipline; citizens supported both instead of resisting them.
- They took part and they watched. Residents’ associations, shopkeepers, schoolchildren, safai mitras and self-help groups joined cleanliness drives, spread the message, and reported places that were still dirty — using exactly the kind of grievance system shown as “CRM — GRIEVANCES” in Fig. 12.4 on page 178.
- They kept it up for years. Winning once can be luck; winning “for seven years in a row” means the habit stayed after the campaign ended. That is citizens, not officials.
Why this is exactly the chapter’s point: page 177 says that “for these bodies to be able to perform their functions efficiently, people living in the city must also perform their duties… For instance, if people carefully follow instructions regarding waste segregation, garbage collection becomes easier.” Indore is the living proof. The Municipal Corporation supplied the vehicles, the routes, the processing plants and the staff; the citizens supplied the segregation, the discipline and the pride. Remove either half and the result collapses.
Did you know? Swachh Survekshan is the annual cleanliness survey of Indian cities conducted under the Swachh Bharat Mission (Urban). Cities are scored on things such as door-to-door collection, waste processing, the state of public and community toilets, and — importantly — on citizen feedback. So a city’s residents literally help decide their own city’s marks.
Think further: ask what your own city or town would score. Which single change by residents would raise it the most? Usually the answer is the same everywhere — segregate at source, and hand it over daily.