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19 hours ago
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This is what happens usually in India: a politician wakes up and launches a cleanliness “drive” with fanfare. They ostentatiously start sweeping a street and speak solemnly about civic duty while the media take photos. The next day it’s over and things go back to how they were before.
But not in Indore in Madhya Pradesh. From 2017, when it won the prize for being the cleanest city in the country, it kept winning for eight straight years, until last year.
“When you come out of the airport, it feels as though you aren’t in India, it’s so clean,” said Nitisha Agarwal, a corporate executive who travels to Indore frequently for work.
Before 2017, Indore had been ranked 25th of 471 towns and cities in the government’s cleanliness rankings.
The transformation has covered many aspects of public life, from the way waste is removed and treated to the army of about 850 sweepers and the thousands of differently coloured bins that line even the smallest alley.
In many cities, families will keep their home scrupulously clean, but a few feet from their front door rubbish is left lying around.
“That other area is seen as someone else’s responsibility and no one sees any contradiction in walking past a stinking pile of rubbish to their clean home,” said Arjun Sehgal, a local chemistry tutor.
Indore was once dotted with fetid garbage dumps where stray cows, pigs and dogs rootled around and added their excrement to the pile, attracting swarms of flies.
But now in the early morning, pavements and road dividers are hosed down with recycled water. The garbage vans roll out playing a jingle called Indore Has Become Number One. As the sound approaches, people emerge from their homes with their rubbish.
Using GPS tracking, a team of workers monitor the vans’ movements to make sure they are doing their job and not cutting corners. The local government says 100% of household waste is segregated into wet, electronics, plastics, non-plastic, biomedical and hazardous materials.
The waste is converted into fuel and compost, which in turn is sold to farmers as manure. Many restaurants have mobile composting vans stationed outside.
“The fruit and vegetable market near my house has different bins for different kinds of waste. There is also a machine there which converts the waste to fuel which is used by city buses and as cooking fuel,” said homemaker Neeru Sharma.
Riya Raghuvanshi, who lived in Indore for five years, said the push from government had been a success because it had created a sense of civic pride in the city. “It’s worked because there is so much pride in this award. Along with the pride is a determination to maintain the city’s reputation. This has been a great motivator,” she said.
Residents have taken up cleanliness as their own personal responsibility, according to Prabhnit Sawhney, a petrol pump owner. “I’ve seen people stopping someone who littered. I’ve seen drivers stop their car when they see rubbish on the street to remove it. It’s become a kind of mission that inspires everyone,” he said.
It took intensive public awareness campaigns to bring about the new behaviour. Schoolchildren were asked to take oaths to keep the city clean. CCTV cameras were installed and anyone who was identified as having dropped rubbish was fined.
Cleanliness competitions were launched. Religious leaders were roped in to invoke religious texts to back up the need for hygiene. During the Hindu festival of Holi, when streets and buildings become stained with bright colours, extra vehicles and water tankers come out to hose the city down.
Sawhney believes Indore’s success could be replicated elsewhere in India if local governments dedicate themselves to it. “You need a willing public, a determined government, and here and there you need very energetic, proactive individuals to keep up the momentum,” he said. “Only then will habits going back generations change.”
