9 Things To Know About Govt's Sanitation Survey  

Urban Development Minister M Venkaiah Naidu recently announced the launch of the Swachh Survekshan-2017. The government is trying to achieve the ambitious target set in its Swachh Bharat Mission that was launched in October 2014 by way of conducting the survey.

Let us look at the nine key features of the survey:

This is the second round of the sanitation survey. The first round of the survey was conducted in 73 cities, with a population of 10 lakh or more. This time, the government has chosen 500 cities to conduct the survey, with a population of one lakh or more. Capital cities, heritage cities, tourists spots have also been included irrespective of the population numbers. The 500 cities account for the country's 70 per cent urban population.

The performance of the cities would be evaluated based on the data collected from urban-local bodies (ULBs) on mission progress and performance, citizen feedback and independent observations by the survey agency. In the second round, the weightage for citizen feedback has been increased to 30 per cent from 25 per cent in the last survey. On the other hand, the weightage for the reporting by ULBs has been trimmed to 45 per cent from 50 per cent. The weightage for independent observation has been retained at 25 per cent.

The cities will be rated based on their strategies to become open-defecation free and their efforts to go beyond creating only physical infrastructure. ULBs will also be judged based on their media coverage and how media-friendly they are.

Stressing on the fact that the Clean India Missions is Jan Andolan and it can't be successful without people's participation, Naidu told mayors, municipal chairpersons, municipal commissioners and other officials to "spend more and more time meeting people, talking to them and motivating them towards using toilets and desist from open defecation".

Focusing on the role of change agents, the Centre has advised urban-local bodies to involve self-help groups, non-governmental organisations, leading women of the area, teachers, other icons and even students to promote the use of toilets to make them open-defecation free.

Noting that the "spirit of competition is essential to improve levels of sanitation", the minister said that the top performer of the first round, Mysore, has a lot of competition this time. This indicates towards an approach that reaching the top once many not be the end of it; top performers will have to work to retain the spot.

A self-assessment tool — Swachh Survekshan Self-Assessment Tool — has been launched for the ULBs to understand where they stand in terms of sanitation at present and make improvements based on that. A guidebook will also be accessible to the ULBs, providing them step-by-step guidance on each survey parameter by way of best practices, tool kits and recommendations.

Cities are encouraged to adopt the best practices implemented by other cities.

The results of the survey will be announced after six months.

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