Survey will help cities know how they fare: Venkaiah Naidu

While announcing the rankings of the Swachh Survekshan Survey conducted by Quality Council of India, Union urban development minister Venkaiah Naidu said, “This is meant to help the cities know where they stand in absolute terms and in relation to others, besides what more needs to be done by each city to ensure sanitation. In that sense, the survey is more holistic, participatory, purposeful and meaningful for future guidance and evolving a course of action.”

Mr Naidu added that the results of the survey were analysed to identify the top leaders, aspiring leaders, cities where accelerated efforts need to be made and the slow-movers.

The last cleanliness survey was conducted in 2014 among 476 cities with a population of one lakh and above and its results were announced last year.

This was before the launch of the “Swachh Bharat Mission” in October 2015.

“Swachh Survek-shan-2016 is primarily intended to measure the impact of the efforts under the Swachh Bharat Mission launched after the survey of 2014,” Mr Naidu said.

Based on the comparison of the marks and ranks of the two surveys, Mr Venkaiah Naidu said the “Swachh Bharat Mission” has had a positive impact in urban areas in terms of sanitation, attitudes of urban local bodies and citizens.

The top 10 cities in terms of sanitation and hygiene in order of rank are Mysuru, Chandigarh, Tiruchirapalli (Tamil Nadu), New Delhi Municipal Council, Visakhapatnam (Andhra Pradesh), Surat, Rajkot (both in Gujarat), Gangtok (Sikkim), and Pimpri Chindwad and Greater Mumbai (both in Maharashtra).

The bottom 10 cities are Kalyan Dombivili (ranked 64), Varanasi, Jamshedpur, Ghaziabad, Raipur, Meerut, Patna, Itanagar, Asansol and Dhanbad.

Of these 32, the top 10 movers who have substantially improved their ranking in the 2016 survey are Allahabad (improved by 45 places), Nagpur (40), Visakhapatnam (39), Gwalior (34), Bhubaneswar (32), Hyderabad (31), Gurgaon (29), Vijayawada (23) and Lucknow (23).

Among the municipal bodies in the NCT of Delhi, New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC) improved its rank from seven in 2014 to four in 2016, South MCD from 47 to 39 and North MCD from 47 to 43, while East MCD slipped from 47th place in 2014 to 52nd in 2016.

The top 10 cities which moved down in the rankings in 2016 (top 10 bottom movers) are Jamshedpur, Kochi, Shillong, Chennai, Guwahati, Asansol, Bengaluru, Ranchi, Kalyan Dombivili and Nashik. While Jamshedpur moved 53 places down this year, Nashik slipped 23 notches.

A total of 33 cities have slipped in terms of rank in 2016 when compared to the previous survey. These include 11 of the 28 cities included in the survey from the north, eight of 15 cities from the south, seven of 15 from the west, five of seven from the east and two of eight from the northeast.

Regarding the methodology used for Swachh Survekshan-2016, Mr Naidu said that out of a total of 2,000 marks for assessing the performance of 73 cities, 60 per cent of marks was assigned for solid waste management-related parameters, 30 per cent for construction of toilets and five per cent each for city-level sanitation strategy and behaviour change communication.

The Quality Council of India deployed 25 teams of three trained surveyors each to visit 42 locations in each city, covering major zones like railway stations, bus stations, religious places, major market places, planned and unplanned residential areas, including slums, and toilet complexes.