ANNOUNCEMENTS
On 2nd October 2014, the government of India launched “Swachh Bharat Abhiyan” in order to commemorate the late father of nation “Mahatma Gandhi”. The idea behind launching this scheme was to promote cleanliness and hygiene amongst the individual of this great nation. In order to promote the abhiyan, a ranking system was established under which all the states of this country would be marked upon various parameters which were; their maintenance of hygiene, open defecation, availability of toilets and management of waste being generated in the cities. This ranking system was called “Swachh Survekshan”.
For the purpose of assessing the cities in the area of waste management, there were 4 parameters set which where namely Door to Door collection (DTDC) of the waste, Source Segregation of waste, Processing of the waste and Disposal of the waste. In order to achieve grades in the respective field, the municipal corporations where needed to submit documents and tenders related to application of resources for completion of these tasks as well as assist the auditor in the field and prove that the claims made with the document are being implemented in the field.
In the year 2018, 4208 cities participated in the Swachh Survekshan; out of which Indore and Bhopal where amongst the highest scoring cities. Indore was ranked as the cleanest city of India and the document submitted by these cities had shown to be achieving 100% Door to Door waste collection and 100% source segregation.
The study tries to establish an comparative assessment between 4 cities of Madhya Pradesh (MP) namely Bhopal, Gwalior, Indore and Jabalpur in order to understand a basic difference between the 4 cities as to what makes the city of Indore the cleanest city of India as compared to Gwalior which has scored very low in the Survekshan 2018.
As per the data provided by the government on various government websites related to the level of cleanliness in these cities, a comparative analysis is established of the employed resources and production of waste. Follow up to this, as per the amount of input and the output of the waste management system of these cities, a life cycle assessment was carried out to track the waste flow through the system and for understanding the missing links in between. Although the cities have been claiming to be performing exuberantly in the following task but to the surprise of the researcher; the facilities provided and the resources employed by these cities are not adequate to support the study. Segregation and processing of the waste were the major grey areas and require an immediate assessment.
The research further suggests a more sustainable and efficient waste management protocol for the selected cities based on their amount of waste being generated or as per the future waste generation for the next 5 to 10 years, in order to improve the quality of waste management in the selected cities.
