Is Bengaluru a three-star city, or a five-star one? Doing away with rankings for the Swachh Bharat Mission, cities will now be given stars similar to the system followed to rate hotels — 2, 3, 4, 5 and 7 stars.
The Union Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs has issued new guidelines for self-assessment of cities under the new rating scheme, with 11 parameters for each star rating, over and above which there are additional parameters for a seven-star rating.
But by its own assessment, the city’s civic body may, at best, get a three or four star rating. “We have done a self-assessment as per the old ranking system. Of the 4,000 marks, our self-assessment has given us less than 2,500. To get a sense of where we stand, Mysuru's self-assessment marks is around 3,500,” said a Swachh Sarvekshan volunteer.
Bengaluru's ranking has seen a dramatic downfall over the last three years. After starting at the seventh place, it fell to 38 and last year to 210.
This year, the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) has put in concerted efforts to ace the sarvekshan and even created a war room for the purpose. Swachh Sarvekshan for the city has been tentatively scheduled for the third week of February and will be held over six days, sources said.
With just just over two weeks left for the sarvekshan, how prepared are we? The new guidelines say the self-assessment is completely decentralised. Each ward will do a self-assessment on all the 11 parameters. The city's self-assessment score will be an aggregate of all the wards. The self-assessment of the 198 wards is yet to begin.
There are also pan-city concerns. “Though we are ready to build toilets, many individual households are not coming forward to do so, which is a setback to declaring the entire city Open Defecation Free (ODF). Apart from that, the visual cleanliness of the city is still a concern,” said Sarfaraz Khan, Joint Commissioner, Solid Waste Management, BBMP.
With protests against waste processing plants rendering them severely under-utilised, the city will also lose marks earmarked for waste processing, officials added.
Volunteers point to more shortcomings. “There is no night sweeping of commercial areas; there are no litter bins; where work is on to declare wards ODF, the due process of third-party verification has not been done,” said a volunteer.
While the civic council adopted a decision to declare nearly 100 wards ODF, it was not followed up. BBMP is building 2,500 public and community toilets apart from 3,500 individual toilets, a project that is yet to be completed.
The recent fire in Bellandur lake will also hit the ratings, as cleanliness of water bodies is one of the criteria, urban experts said.
