With Thiruvananthapuram’s ranking yet again hovering around 300 in the latest Swachh Survekshan rankings put out by the Union Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs, the city Corporation authorities have again questioned the methodology used for the survey, which they say does not consider effective decentralised waste management methods.
Under the rankings for major cities having a population of less than 10 lakh, Thiruvananthapuram is ranked at 304, an improvement from last year’s position of 363. Kochi is ranked 372 while Kozhikode is ranked 361. Alappuzha has been ranked 152 for its zero-waste innovations.
“The Swachh Survekshan has mainly focussed on door-to-door collection of waste and on having centralised waste management plants. Our focus has been on decentralised waste management, segregated waste collection, and recycling. The survey team has been unable to appreciate these methods or consider our achievements in this sector. In the previous years, we had written to the Centre regarding the issues with such a survey, but there has not been much of a response,” says Mayor K. Sreekumar.
Ranked second in 2015
In 2015, Thiruvananthapuram was ranked second in the Swachh Bharat rankings for the cleanest capital cities. It was also ranked eighth overall. According to Corporation officials, that ranking was done based on ground-level surveys. In 2016, the methodology changed.
“Now, everything is based on online questionnaires and data analysis. The agencies now hired for ground-level surveys are mostly consultancies focussing on the finance sector, with hardly any waste management expert in it. They are asked to go to a pre-assigned street or a house, take a few photographs and upload in the portal. The survey also gives more weightage to online voting by the public as well as advertisement of the waste management initiatives. There are even consultancies that are now offering their services to prepare the materials to achieve a better ranking. So, rather than results on the ground, the focus is on building a perception with data. Anyone who has travelled through some of the cities that have come above us will know how unfair it is to rank cities in Kerala below them in cleanliness,” says a Corporation health official.
Poor sample size
According to information from the Swachh dashboard, only 779 people from Thiruvananthapuram participated in the survey. The city also does not have any star in the garbage-free city star ratings while many of the North Indian cities have 5-star ratings.
After the closure of the centralised waste treatment plant at Vilappilsala following people’s protests, the city has over the years evolved a decentralised model with biodegradable waste being taken care of using kitchen bins in households and aerobic bins in various localities. Last year, it also stopped all illegal collection and dumping of septage waste by introducing a licensing system, through which four crore litres of septage has been collected and treated at the Muttathara sewage treatment plant.
The Corporation has also opened smart waste collection hubs at different points in the city for segregated collection of non-biodegradable waste, from broken bottles to footwear.
“Compared to the previous years, the Survekshan this year was robust in giving marks to both centralised and decentralised models. Alappuzha has been acknowledged as the best small city in innovation and best practice, which I feel was long overdue. As far as Thiruvananthapuram, there could be reasons other than waste management, like the low-citizen participation in the survey,” says waste management expert Swati Singh Sambyal.