Centre to survey 75 cities to gauge ‘clean India’ pace

To find out whether people are conforming to ideas suggested by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to keep their cities clean or not, the Ministry of Urban Development has come up with a new plan. Under the new initiative, the ministry led by Venkaih Naidu has planned to survey 75 new cities, which includes tier-1, 2 and 3 towns, to study hygiene and cleanliness condition in the urban India.

In a first-of-its-kind move, christened as Swachh Survekshan, will commence on January 5. The ministry has also invited widespread citizen feedback on the state of affairs in their respective cities.

To give a fillip to Modi’s flagship programme Swachh Bharat Mission, the ministry has roped in acclaimed industry-government interface, the Quality Council of India (QCI), to build transparency and credibility in the whole process. A team of 110 Quality Council of India (QCI) assessors will be deployed across 75 different cities to get the work done on the construction of household individual toilets and community toilet seats, door-to-door collection of garbage and waste management and treatment.

Speaking on the survey, Mission Director and Joint Secretary Praveen Prakash said, “Swachh Survekshan is the very first survey commissioned by the ministry since the launch of Swachh Bharat Mission in October 2014. The ministry wants to ensure that quality of survey is well-maintained as its most critical and crucial for establishing reputation of different cities.”

Adding further, the official said, “We have even conducted elaborate training sessions for the assessors to ensure that the whole process of evaluation is transparent, hence, building the survey’s credibility of reflecting ground-level realities.”

According to ministry officials, the training would cover lectures by experts, municipals officials and QCI project team to ensure that the surveyors are equipped with adequate IT tools (tabs, apps and web tools) to minimise physical intervention and reduce chances of errors. Furthermore, the ministry confirmed that professionals with over 10 years of experience in the field of assessment and inspection across different sectors were put up to the task of evaluating different centres.