Where Are The Cleanest Villages Of India?

Findings of a National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) survey on the state of cleanliness in rural India revealed Sikkim was the best of the lot while Jharkhand stood at the bottom. The survey was conducted between May and June last year, and covered 3,788 villages and 2,907 urban blocks in 26 states and union territories. The list of top 10 cleanest states also included, Kerala, Mizoram, Himachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Haryana, Punjab, Uttarakhand, Manipur and Meghalaya in that order.  The list of poor performers included states of Chhattisgarh, Odisha, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Jammu and Kashmir.

The survey rankings are based on people's access to sanitation and the usage of these facilities.

A look at key findings of the survey:

• Out of the 3788 villages surveyed, only 13.1 per cent villages have community toilets.

• While 36.7 per cent villages had pakki nali and 19.0 per cent villages had katchi nali as drainage arrangement for waste water coming out of the households. On the other hand, 44.4 per cent villages had no drainage arrangement.

• In rural India, only 42.5 per cent households were found to have access to water for use in toilet. In urban India, this number stood at 87.9 per cent.

• The percentage of persons going for open defecation was estimated to be 52.1 per cent in rural areas and 7.5 per cent in urban areas.

• In rural areas, 50.5 per cent of the households kept the garbage at a specified place outside their own house, 24.4 per cent disposed of the garbage in the nearby agriculture field, 5.5 per cent households kept it at the common place outside the house, 4.4 per cent disposed of the garbage in the biogas plant or manure pit while 15.1 per cent threw it around the house.