Context

• The ninth edition of Swachh Survekshan, hailed as the world’s largest cleanliness survey, marks a significant milestone in India’s urban sanitation landscape.
• Spearheaded by the Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM)-Urban, this annual survey has evolved from a modest competition among fewer than 100 cities in 2016 to an extensive evaluation involving over 4,500 urban centres in 2024-25.
• While public attention often fixates on rankings and awards, the deeper value of the survey lies in the critical insights it offers into urban waste management, city-level governance, and the evolving behavioural patterns of citizens and policymakers alike.

A Comprehensive Urban Sanitation Assessment

• The survey serves as a crucial reality check for city managers and policymakers, offering an evidence-based assessment on ten comprehensive parameters, ranging from waste segregation, collection, and disposal to sanitation worker welfare and grievance redressal.
• Its robust methodology, incorporating third-party verification and feedback from 140 million residents, lends credibility to its findings and amplifies its utility as a planning and monitoring tool.
• In essence, Swachh Survekshan has transformed into a powerful lever for competition and performance enhancement, nudging cities across India toward cleaner futures.

 Significance and Key Features of the Survey

• Encouraging Equitable Participation: Population Categories and the Super Swachh League
  • A significant reform in this edition was the creation of the Super Swachh League, designed to break the monotony of a few cities repeatedly dominating the top ranks.
  • Indore, Surat, and Navi Mumbai, historically top performers, were placed in a new league, opening the door for cities like Ahmedabad, Bhopal, and Lucknow to rise in the rankings within their population categories.
  • The segmentation of cities into five population brackets, from those with fewer than 20,000 people to over one million, helped level the playing field and encouraged more diverse participation.
  • This democratisation has proved fruitful.
  • Odisha’s success exemplifies this shift: Bhubaneswar’s ascent from 34th to 9th place, and the rise of smaller cities like Aska and Chikiti, highlight how inclusive frameworks can foster widespread improvement.
• A Growing Ecosystem of Best Practices and Innovation
  • Beyond rankings, the Swachh Survekshan serves as a repository of best practices that can be scaled and replicated.
  • The transformation of cities such as Indore and Surat reveals the possibilities of municipal innovation.
  • Indore's pioneering six-way waste segregation model, Surat’s monetisation of treated sewage, Pune’s ragpicker-run cooperatives, and Lucknow’s waste wonder park underscore how creativity, policy support, and community engagement can turn urban waste into an asset.
  • Similarly, Agra’s conversion of the toxic Kuberpur dumpsite into green space showcases the potential of modern remediation technologies like bioremediation and biomining.
• Cleanliness as an Economic and Cultural Imperative
  • Tourist hubs and high-footfall areas received special attention in the latest survey, with Prayagraj being recognised for sanitation management during the Maha Kumbh.
  • As India accounts for a meagre 1.5% of global tourist arrivals, sustained cleanliness is essential not only for public health and aesthetics but also for enhancing the tourist experience and economic growth.
  • The thematic focus of Swachh Survekshan 2025, Reduce, Reuse, Recycle (RRR), underscores this broader ambition.
  • While the previous year's theme, waste to wealth, signalled an economic opportunity, India has yet to fully capitalise on the value embedded in its waste streams.

Challenges Ahead and The Way Forward

• Despite visible progress, the survey reveals persistent challenges in developing behavioural change.
• While SBM has successfully instilled societal rejection of open defecation, nurturing a similar mindset around waste minimisation, consumerism, and recycling has been elusive.
• This behavioural inertia remains one of the most significant roadblocks to lasting impact.
• Moreover, the daily generation of 1.5 lakh tonnes of solid waste poses a formidable challenge. Effective management will depend largely on the capacity and performance of ULBs.
• Their ability to enforce waste segregation, ensure efficient collection, and handle plastic and e-waste will shape the next chapter in India’s urban cleanliness story.
• Going forward, the focus must shift from celebrating momentary rankings to institutionalising cleanliness as a civic virtue and economic opportunity.
• With policy support, community ownership, and technological innovation, Indian cities can transition from managing waste to creating wealth, dignity, and health for all.

Conclusion

• India’s urban cleanliness journey, as illuminated by Swachh Survekshan 2024-25, is both inspiring and instructive.
• It demonstrates that with the right mix of competition, data, public engagement, and political will, even the most chaotic waste systems can be reformed.
• The remarkable turnaround of Surat from a garbage-laden city in the 1990s to a sanitation model today proves that change is not only possible, it is replicable.