NEW DELHI: Manoj Joshi, Secretary, Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs, Government of India, launched the eighth edition of Swachh Suvekshan 2023, on May 27, under the Swachh Bharat Mission 2.0, a flagship scheme of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to make the country garbage free.
This year, the survey is observing the theme of ‘Waste to Wealth’ aiming to promote circularity in waste management. Swachh Survekshan is the largest urban sanitary survey in the world. In the seventh edition of Swachh Survekshan in 2022, 4355 cities and 85,860 wards were covered. Additionally, 2.12 lakh locations were visited, 5.5 lakh documents were analysed, 1.14 crore citizen’s feedbacks were recorded and 4.77 lakh citizen validations were received, 23.38 lakhs photos and videos were recorded and 17.24 lakhs data points were collected.
This year, certain changes have been introduced in the manner of collection of data under the Swachh Survekshan. The survey would be done in four phases instead of three, and citizen validation and field assessment will be done in the third phase as well. So, the cities have to work all year round instead of working for a few days during the survey to show better results in the survey. Apart from this, additional indicators have been added this year such as phased reduction of plastic waste, ‘Waste to Wonder’ parks, plastic waste processing and zero waste events and yellow sports (open urination) and red spots (open spitting).
Swachh Bharat Mission 2.0 was launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on October 1, 2021, aiming to make Indian cities garbage free. The mission aims to promote circularity in the field of waste management and the Swachh Survekshan also pursues a similar theme of ‘Waste to Wealth’. Additionally, both SBM and Swachh Survekshan promote competitive federalism in the country, in which cities compete against each other to provide better services to the citizens in their area of jurisdiction.