Context: Recently, the Union Minister of Housing and Urban Affairs has released the assessment of garbage free cities for 2019-20 and also launched the revised protocol for the Star Rating of Garbage Free Cities.
Background

• The Star Rating Protocol was launched by the Ministry in 2018 to institutionalize a mechanism for cities to achieve Garbage Free status, and to motivate cities to achieve higher degrees of sustainable cleanliness.
• It is one of the various initiatives which intends to make Swachh Bharat Mission-Urban (SBM-U) as a successful project.

About the rating

• It is based on 12 parameters which follow a SMART framework – Single metric, Measurable, Achievable, Rigorous verification mechanism and Targeted towards outcomes.
• It is a comprehensive framework that assesses cities across 24 different components of Solid Waste Management (SWM) and is graded based on overall marks received.

Procedure

• The Star Rating is supported by self-assessment and self-verification for achieving a certain star rating.
• It also ensures the involvement of citizen groups for a transparent system of self-declaration.
• Further, the self-declaration is further verified through an independent third party agency appointed by MoHUA.
• The revised protocol will consider ward-wise geo-mapping, monitoring of SWM value chain through ICT interventions like Swachh Nagar App and zone-wise rating in cities with population of 50 lakh+.
• The protocol has been devised in a holistic manner including components such as cleanliness of drains & water bodies, plastic waste management, managing construction & demolition waste, etc. which are critical drivers for achieving garbage free cities.

Key Findings

• A total of six cities have been certified as 5-Star, 65 cities as 3-Star and 70 cities as 1-Star.
• The 5-Star cities include Ambikapur (Chattisgarh), Surat and Rajkot (Gujarat), Indore (Madhya Pradesh) and Navi Mumbai (Maharashtra).

Significance

• The performance of cities under the Star Rating Protocol is crucial as it carries significant weightage for their final assessment in Swachh Survekshan. (Swachh Survekshan is the annual urban cleanliness survey conducted by the government.)
• It also ensures certain minimum standards of sanitation through a set of prerequisites defined in the framework.
• Since the rating is conducted at a city level, it makes the process easier to implement and helps the cities incrementally improve their overall cleanliness.
• The rating protocol is an outcome-based tool that helps MoHUA and other stakeholders to evaluate cities on the basis of this single rating.

About Swachh Sarvekshan Abhiyaan

• Swachh Survekshan, conducted by MoHUA since 2016, is the world’s largest urban sanitation and cleanliness survey.
• It has been instrumental in fostering a spirit of healthy competition among towns and cities to improve their service delivery to citizens and towards creating cleaner cities and bring behaviour change in the citizen towards cleaning.
• The primary goal of Swachh Survekshans is to encourage large scale citizen participation and create awareness amongst all sections of society about the importance of working together towards making towns and cities better places to reside in.
• Conducted under the ambit of the Swachh Bharat Mission (Urban), the annual survey has managed to mobilise people, resources and authorities in an effort to prove that their city, of all cities in India, is the cleanest and that sustainable practices, both by citizens and ULBs, are being encouraged and promulgated.