9-Sep-2021: MoS Jal Shakti Shri Prahlad Singh Patel Launches Swachh Survekshan Grameen 2021

The Minister of State, Jal Shakti Ministry, Shri Prahlad Singh Patel presided over the e-launch of Swachh Survekshan Grameen 2021 under Swachh Bharat Mission (Grameen) Phase -II at an event organized by Department of Drinking Water and Sanitation (DDWS) today. The event was attended by Shri Pankaj Kumar, Secretary, Jal Shakti Ministry, Shri Arun Baroka, Additional Secretary, DDWS, other DDWS officials, media persons and virtually by senior SBMG officials from States/UTs.

The Department of Drinking Water and Sanitation (DDWS) will undertake Swachh Survekshan Grameen 2021 countrywide to support acceleration of ODF Plus interventions and increase momentum for improving ODF Sustainability as well as Solid and Liquid Waste Management (SLWM)activities across the villages in the country. DDWS had commissioned Swachh Survekshan Grameen (SSG)on two occasions earlier in 2018 and 2019.

Addressing the gathering, the Minister of State, Shri Prahlad Singh Patel said that under the inspiring leadership of Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi and his strong will power, India achieved the massive challenge of ODF declaration of all villages in mission mode in five years (2014-19). Shri Patel said that the 75thanniversary celebration of India’s Independence or Azadi ka Amrit Mahotsav has started this year with the symbolic Dandi Yatra. The greatest Swachhata Ambassador ever, Mahatma Gandhi said that Cleanliness is more important than freedom highlighting its significance in our lives.

The Minister of State highlighted that the initiative of undertaking SSG during Azadi ka Amrit Mahotsav is a very significant step and states are the biggest stakeholders in this. Shri Patel said that Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi has always stressed on the strength and importance of Swachh Bharat Mission in changing millions lives. The vision of Prime Minister made the unbelievable task of triggering Behavior Change for ending open defecation leading to construction of over 10 crore toilets and achievement of Open Defecation Free (ODF) India. The vision further led to Jal Jeevan Mission (JJM) for addressing water security. As Swachhata is an eternal journey, the Phase II of SBM (G) aims at achieving the goal of comprehensive cleanliness or Sampoorna Swachhata by addressing ODF Sustainability and SLWM issues.

The Minister of State added that the findings of the Survey by a third party agency will help us in bridging the gaps by identifying challenges on ground and working with all states. The citizen feedback will strengthen the program further. The SSG 2021 mobile App will also be made available in major local Indian languages. The survey will be well monitored and complimented with frequent field visits.

The Minister of State, Jal Shakti also released the SSG 2021 Protocol document; SSG 2021 Dashboard and the mobile App for Citizens feedback at the launch event.  A detailed presentation on SSG protocol and survey implementation was also made at the launch.

Shri Pankaj Kumar, Secretary, Ministry of Jal Shakti in his keynote address said that Prime Minister, Shri Narendra Modi gave a clarion call for Swachh Bharat in 2014 and a National behavior change movement was launched whose two primary yardsticks were Transparency and people’s participation (Jan Bhagidari). Following these yardsticks, the programme succeeded in achieving its goal of ensuring access to safe sanitation to all in rural India. SSG was conducted in 2018 and 2019 to measure the success of the programme in context of the goals set; now the importance of SSG has assumed significant importance in Phase 2 of SBMG for promoting commitment to cleanliness, transparency and people’s participation. The survey will also help us in coming over the challenges due to Covid pandemic in recent time and achieve ODF Plus status by our villages in near future.

Shri Arun Baroka, Additional Secretary, DDWS, Ministry of Jal Shakti in his welcome address said that the past experiences of SSG has shown that it fosters a very healthy competition between districts and States to improve their rankings. The Survekshan provides us a great opportunity to give the necessary momentum to ODF Plus activities especially due to unexpected slow down due to covid pandemic over last few months. One of the country’s largest such survey with around 17,475 villages, it not only gives huge publicity to the programme and ODF Plus goals, but at the same time engages districts and states in enhancing their reputation in sanitation, overall cleanliness and waste management.

6-Mar-2019: President Presents Swachh Survekshan 2019 Awards

Indore has been awarded the cleanest city in the country in the Swachh Survekshan 2019 (SS 2019) awards while Bhopal has been declared as the cleanest capital. Ujjain has bagged the award for being the cleanest city in the population category of 3 lakh to 10 lakh. The awards were presented by the President, Shri Ram Nath Kovind.

Speaking on the occasion, the President said that India has made remarkable progress towards achieving the goals of rural and urban sanitation. He said, by winning the first prize in all the four surveys so far, Indore has set an example for other urban centres. Cleanliness should be integral to the behaviour of every citizen to make it effective and sustainable. Many people pay attention to personal hygiene but remain apathetic to public and community cleanliness. Change in this mentality is important for achieving the goals of Swachh Bharat.

Shri Hardeep S. Puri in his address said Indore has now retained the top spot in the survey of being the cleanest city for a consecutive three years. Every year, cities and towns across India are awarded with the title of 'Swachh Cities' on the basis of their cleanliness and sanitation drive as a part of the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan that was launched in 2014. Sixty-four lakh citizens participated in the survey which included more than 4,000 cities in 2019. Indore has reported a 70% drop in vector-borne ailments in 2019, which is being attributed to Swachh Bharat Abhiyan.

Stating that Swachh Survekshan 2019 has seen several innovations and best practices emerging from the cities, Shri Puri said that through a mix of innovative thinking, technological interventions and active stakeholder engagement, cities have found novel ways to address issues of sanitation and waste management in their areas. “Some of these innovations include conducting zero-waste public events, converting floral waste to value-added products, cultivating of Oyster Mushrooms from agricultural and kitchen waste in used plastic bottles, etc.”.

The Minister informed that we have made impressive achievements under the SBM in these four and a half years wherein Urban areas of 23 states / UTs have become ODF, and more than 94% cities are already ODF. Nearly 63 lakh individual household toilets (94% progress), and more than 5 lakh community / public toilet seats (more than 100% progress) have been constructed. Parallelly, more than 42,000 public toilet blocks across 1400 cities have been mapped and visible on Google maps. The Google toilet locator also provides an option for citizens to provide their feedback after using the toilets. Waste processing has gone up to 52% (compared to a mere 18% at the start of the Mission)

Shri Puri made a special mention of the top 20 cities in this year’s survey who have been the forerunners in Urban India’s progress towards swachhata – from large cities such as Indore, Mysuru, Ahmedabad, Navi Mumbai, Tirupati, Rajkot, Vijayawada, Ghaziabad, Surat, to smaller towns and cities such as Mul, Ambikapur, Ujjain, NDMC, Karhad, Lonavala, Vita, Dewas, Bhilai, Shahganj, and Panhala. Ambikapur in Chattisgarh got the second prize overall and has become a role model for other towns in the state. Chhattisgarh has also emerged India’s top performer among states, followed by Jharkhand and Maharashtra.

The Minister said that the phenomenal success that this public innovation in the form of Swachh Survekshan has achieved in transforming the Swachh Bharat Mission into the world’s largest behavior change programme.   He said that in order to ensure that the momentum and efforts are sustained, we are actively considering the idea of continuing this initiative by having periodic rankings based on data being provided by cities on MIS, and citizens’ feedback, which will then feed into the larger annual survekshan at the end of each year, ensuring that the momentum garnered among cities continues unabated, and outcomes achieved are sustained in the long run. “The Swachh Survekshan exercise was started with the objective of inculcating a spirit of healthy competition among cities in their race towards becoming India’s cleanest cities. It is indeed heartening to see that this annual survey has managed to galvanize citizens also to become our partners in progress.” he added.

MoHUA conducted its first survey ‘Swachh Survekshan-2016’ survey for ranking 73 cities (Urban Local Bodies), in January 2016, under the ambit of the Swachh Bharat Mission (Urban).  In order to expand the coverage of cities, the Ministry conducted its second survey ‘Swachh Survekshan-2017’ in January-February 2017, to rank 434 cities. ‘Swachh Survekshan 2018’ saw a massive increase in both scale of survey and intensity of participation, with 4,203 cities covered in last year’s survey. Swachh Survekshan 2019 has scaled even greater heights, covering 4,237 cities, and that too, in a record time of 28 days, in a completely paperless, digital format for data collection! Moreover, even in this short span of time, assessors managed to visit nearly 73,000 wards, 21,000 commercial areas, 69,000 residential areas, 75,000 community/public toilets, and more than 3100 waste to compost plants across the country!

4-Oct-2018: Swachh Survekshan Grameen Awards 2018

Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi gave awards to top Ranked State, District and State with maximum citizen participation based on the National Swachh Survekshan Grameen 2018 commissioned by Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation. The awards by Prime Minister were given at the concluding session of Mahatma Gandhi International Sanitation Convention at Rashtrapati Bhawan Cultural Centre. Haryana was ranked as the best State while Satara District of Maharashtra was ranked as the best district as per the ranking undertaken by Swachh Survekshan Grameen 2018. Uttar Pradesh was rewarded for maximum citizens’ participation. Later, Ms. Uma Bharti, Union Minister for Drinking Water and Sanitation gave awards at Pravasi Bhartiya Kendra, New Delhi to top three States and Districts from all the zones of the country.

The Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation had commissioned “Swachh Survekshan Grameen-2018” (SSG 2018) through an independent survey agency to develop ranking of all districts of India on the basis of quantitative and qualitative sanitation (Swachhata) parameters. This ranking was done based on a comprehensive set of parameters including surveys of public places like schools, Anganwadis, PHCs, Haat/ Bazaars, Panchayat and citizen’s perception of Swachhata and their recommendations for improvement of the program and data from the SBM-G IMIS. 

As part of Swachh Survekshan Grameen, 6786 villages in 685 Districts across India were covered. 27,963 public places namely schools, anganwadis, public health centres, Haat/ bazaars/religious places in these 6786 villages were visited by an independent agency for survey. Around 182,531 citizens were interviewed for their feedback in villages on SBM-G related issues. Also, citizens were mobilized to provide feedback on sanitation relation related issues online using an application developed for the purpose. The collection of data from Direct Observation were based on physical observation of the sanitation status in public places by the survey agency. The survey agency used maps and simple handheld device/recording formats to record their observations and findings along with Photographs/videos, wherever necessary.

Feedback from people were obtained using Community wide open meetings, Personal Interviews and Focussed Group Discussions. FGDs were conducted in each village. More than 1.5 crore people participated in the SSG 2018 and provided their feedback.

The SSG 2018 turned out to be massive mass mobilisation exercise with communities in each village undertaking special drives to improve the general cleanliness in their villages. Gram Panchayats invested funds from their local area development fund to augment the sanitation situation in public places.

The top ranked States and Districts which received awards are as below:

Overall Ranking:

• Top 3 States-1) Haryana, 2) Gujarat 3) Maharashtra
• Top 3 Districts 1) Satara, Maharashtra 2) Rewari, Haryana 3) Pedapalli, Telangana
• States with maximum citizen participation 1) Uttar Pradesh 2) Gujarat 3) Maharashtra
• Districts with maximum citizens’ participation 1) Nashik, Maharashtra 2) Solapur, Maharashtra 3) Chittorgarh, Rajasthan

Zonal Ranking:

Top 3 States – Zonal and UT Level

Top 3 Districts – Zonal and UT Level