Udaipurites seem to be highly elated as Lake City has made tremendous progress in the recent Swaccha Bharat ratings. From last year’s ranking of 310 out of 434 cities, it has jumped up to be 85th out of 485 cities this year. In Rajasthan also, it has jumped to the 2nd position from 10th. Only two cities of Rajasthan are there in the first 100 at a national level in cleanest cities – Udaipur and Jaipur.
State-wise, Rajasthan is at number 8 in the cleanest province in the nation with its two towns in the first 100 list. Jharkhand occupies the top position with its 9 cities in the top 100 while Maharashtra with 29 cities among top 100, Chhattisgarh with 7 towns in top 100 and Madhya Pradesh with its 19 cities among top 100 are placed second, third and fourth respectively. In the first phase of ranking on the basis of cleanliness 4203 big and small cities were evaluated. Small cities were divided into five groups. Those of Rajasthan were included in the west zone. Out of 4000 total marks for ranking, 1200 were allotted to documentation, 1400 to direct observation and 1400 to citizen feedback. The percentage of marks for ranking was: collection and transport – 30%, ODF – 30%, processing, and disposal – 25% and innovation, IEC, and capacity building got 5% marks each. In west zone, Jhalrapatan secured the first position in Rajasthan (102nd in zone), Ratangarh got the second position in the state (115th in zones, Dungarpur secured the third position in Rajasthan (126th in zones) and Pratapgarh secured 4th position in Rajasthan (153 in zone), Rajsamand and Banswara got 572nd 790th position respectively. Among big cities, Chittorgarh was placed at the 323rd position.
In the service level progress, an on-the-spot inspection was done by the swacchta survey on the basis of a document prepared by the municipal corporation. The city secured 564 marks out of 1400. The score was extremely low as compared to the marks given by the corporation itself. This may be due to negative marking under direct observation, the team from New Delhi visited railway station, bus stands, markets as lakes and took feedback. The score was 940 out of 1200. A lot has been done for cleaning the lakes. The corporation has made joint efforts with the railway and roadways authorities for cleanliness. Awareness among the public was also created. For citizen feedback, swacchata app was downloaded.
The corporation had made a large number of people download the app with the help of Parshads and had made full preparation for citizen feedback. The city was evaluated on the basis of the resolution of public complaints and the time taken by the employees of the corporation in doing so. Out of 4000, the city scored 1118.47 marks that is much higher than the average 1986.27 of Rajasthan and 1913 of the country.
The rank and score of some other small places of Udaipur division were: Salumber 445 with 2003 marks, Fatehsagar 779 with 1407 marks, Bhindar 796 with 1352 marks, Kanode 847 with 1456 marks.
The positive factors that contributed to the good rank included the declaration of city as ODF, launch of door-to-door collection of garbage is good progress in solid waste disposal, use of AP, public awareness about the campaign, fixing up of targets of work, effective presentation of the work done, focus on regular cleaning increase in the number of trippers and biometric attendance of workers.
Some weak areas included the lack of proper functioning of online services such as building permission and collection of urban development. The city doesn’t have a proper system of solid waste management as good bidders are not available. Due to lack of public awareness hoardings and banners are placed in wrong spots. There are no toilets at several places. The existing ones are not properly maintained. No decentralized system exists for transport and segregation of garbage. The number of trippers has to be increased and the public should learn to use the services of trippers and dustbins.
In the opinion of the municipal commissioner, Siddharth Sihag, the city deserved to be among the top 20 in the country. The city has done well in spite of the fact that it lacks proper transport, solid waste management, and door-to-door garbage collection facilities. He appreciates the contribution of the public and his team City Mayor, Chandra Singh Kothari says that the corporation analyzed the weaknesses and then worked on them. The focus was on coming up to standards laid down for evaluation. The huge public support has been a big positive factor in getting good ranking.
In the ranking under Rajasthan health programme, Udaipur has secured 9th position in the state. The areas included in the ranking done for the first time are child health, maternity health, prevention of diseases, patient feedback, family planning, seasonal diseases, vaccination, safe delivery, waterborne diseases, leprosy, TB, etc. The marks allotted for evaluation were: Input-25, Intermediate-50, output-25. On the basis of this evaluation, the first ten districts were marked green, the next ten were marked yellow and the last ten as red. In all the programmes, there were cut off benchmarks and the districts that did not meet the benchmark and the districts that did not meet the benchmark in each head were given zero marks.
Udaipur got high marks in disease control. The performance in child health care was also good. Out of 58 PHCs, only one gave feedback. The weak areas were maternal health, sterilization, and delivery system. The first ten districts in order of merit were: Sikar, Ajmer, Sriganganagar, Bhilwara, Kota, Rajsamand, Junjhunu, Jodhpur, Udaipur, and Chittorgarh.
The aim of the programme, according to medical and health department, is to generate healthy competition and improve performance in weak areas.
In the opinion of Dr. Sanjeev Tank, CMHO, Udaipur the aim of the district is to rise to the top rank, weak areas would be strengthened with hard work. This year the district was not able to do well due to lack of proper data entry. The patient feed was also a weak area. In disease control, the performance was good. All the officers would now be able to perform better as their ranking in the programme would be made available on the desktop.