Swachh Survekshan 2020

Swachh Survekshan 2020 

• For the fourth year in a row, Indore has been ranked the cleanest city in the country, according to a Swachh Survekshan 2020 report released by the Union Housing and Urban Affairs Ministry
• The survey of sanitation in over 4,000 cities was carried out over 28 days earlier this year. 
• Swachh Survekshan, in its fifth edition, had become the world’s largest sanitation survey, with 1.8 crore citizens giving their feedback.
• Among the cities with over 1 lakh population, Indore was ranked number one, followed by Surat, Navi Mumbai, Ambikapur, Mysore, Vijayawada, Ahmedabad, New Delhi, Chandrapur, and Khargone. Among smaller cities, with a population under 1 lakh, the top three cities —Karad, Sasvad, and Lonavala — were all from Maharashtra.
• Chhattisgarh was ranked the cleanest State out of those with over 100 cities, while Jharkhand was the cleanest among those with fewer than 100 urban local bodies (ULBs) or cities. In the category of “Ganga towns”, Varanasi was ranked the cleanest. 
• Jalandhar got the top rank among cantonments and New Delhi was the cleanest capital city
• Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM)-­Urban had a deep impact on health, livelihoods, quality of life, and behavior, which had come in handy when dealing with the COVID­19 pandemic. 
• When the mission was launched in 2014, waste processing was 18%. Now it had increased to 66%
• Swachh Survekshan, which began with a survey of 73 cities in 2016, had grown to cover 4,242 cities, 62 cantonment boards, and 97 “Ganga towns” in 2020. Survey teams visited 58,000 residential and 20,000 commercial areas in 28 days, while 1.87 crore citizens’ feedbacks were received.
• Ministry was actively working on coming up with a second phase of the SBM­Urban, which was initially supposed to be till March 2020 but was extended till March 2021. 
• The goal of the second phase would be to take targets further, then making cities open defecation­free, to also include 100% sludge management and zero dumpings of waste in the open.

Source: The Hindu