Why are Indian cities so dirty?

IN PERSPECTIVE

In November 2021, for the fifth time in a row, Indore was ranked India’s cleanest city in the government’s annual cleanliness survey ‘Swachh Survekshan’. Surat, Vijaywada and Navi Mumbai followed.

To the average Indian, the whole idea of the survey is amusing. The average Indian city is filthy. Despite rising income levels and higher expectations, Indian cities are characterised by overflowing garbage, poor roads and pavements, people urinating and spitting everywhere, hoardings and graffiti on city walls, and stray animals wandering all across the city.

In 2020, Bengaluru ranked 214, falling from 194 the previous year -- a difference that hardly mattered to the average Bengalurean as we are accepting and adjusting to the ugliness of the city and the inefficiency of the government.

On the face of it, the survey is a good idea. Hopefully, it will create some level of competition between cities and force city governments to improve living conditions.

In Indore, apparently, one sees no litter, overflowing garbage, graffiti, etc. This is due to a set of actions by the municipality and residents, including strengthening the sanitation infrastructure.

The Indore Municipal Corporation (IMC) has a fleet of 1,500 vehicles and a team of 11,000 safai workers that conduct door-to-door collection of garbage. Waste is segregated and recycled. The IMC sustains its operation by levying a user charge for door-to-door garbage collection. It apparently collected 86% of its cost last year, which is quite significant.

The IMC also engaged in a public-private initiative with the Ahmedabad-based NEPRA Resource Management to build and run India’s largest solid waste management plant. This plant makes a profit by selling recycled garbage. Apparently, the firm earns approximately Rs 1.6 crore per month from these sales and pays the municipality a royalty of approximately Rs 1.5 crore per year for dry waste.

This is all very impressive, and begs the question: Can the Indore model be facilitated across the country? Will this model make all our cities cleaner? Is it sustainable?

Of course, this is one of the solutions. However, till we deal with the more complex structural problems inherent in the government (especially at the city level), the answer is, unfortunately, no.

Till the larger structural issues are dealt with, we will never pull ourselves out of the mess (literally) we are in. The government’s Swachh Bharat Mission is an ambitious campaign to build toilets for 12 million urban households, 25 million public toilets, and 30 million community toilets and needs to be lauded. But it is not reaping the results anticipated. Similarly, the 100 Smart Cities programme envisages 24X7 drinking water, zero garbage disposal and total solid waste management with full-scale drainage and sewerage systems.

We need better ways of managing ourselves. Our system of high-cost government with low returns is not sustainable. The solution is two-fold --administrative and financial. The financial is, of course, dependent on the administrative.

We currently have an administrative system that is highly centralised and more suitable to governing India than serving its populace. The focus of this public administration system is at the national and state level. It barely engages with citizens at a local level. Not being answerable to citizens is at the root of the problem at the city and rural levels. The IAS and IPS are a system to maintain control (rather than transform, as was the colonial ICS).

Currently, of the about 18.5 million persons employed by the government, only about two million are employees at the local level. That means that only 11% of government employees interface with the citizenry. The rest are ordering us around. Quite literally, this means that while we can build toilets, sewage and garbage collection systems, we don’t have enough people to actually run them. This is a failure of administration in our cities and villages. Attempts like the Community Development Programme and the 74th Amendment to the Constitution have been made to change this system but the existing control mechanism of governance has stymied the reform process.

Some of the reasons for political and bureaucratic resistance at the state level to share power and resources with local-level institutions include the domination of local elites over the major share of the benefits of welfare schemes, the lack of capability at the local level and lack of political will.

Despite the encouraging Swachh Survekshan results and Indore’s successes, no rural area or city or town in India has any worthwhile local government or truly independent municipal administration autonomous of the state governments. Building public toilets is laudable, but keeping them working and clean is the job of the state. The government should focus on why it fails to deliver services in India. Only then can we make a Swachh Bharat.

(The writer is a Bengaluru-based urban planner)