Swachh survey is unfair to Kerala cities

At a time when sociologists and urban designers hail Japan's bin-free streets, Swachh Survekshan 2019 wants to know whether your city has enough litter bins.

If the first question in the citizen questionnaire for the 2019 survey is any indicator, this year too none of the Kerala cities are going to be judged fairly. Starting from the first survey in 2017, the survey has not taken into account, waste management systems which rely on people processing their waste at the source. 

The top officials of state Suchitwa Mission had brought this to the attention of Swachh Bharath officials in their meetings. Last year, the survey's detailed questionnaire did include some additional points to gauge source-level waste management methods, however the citizen questionnaire did not include these questions. Even in the detailed set, there were more questions related to collection of waste. 

Many might be wondering what is wrong with bin culture. After all, we have all seen celebrities like Anushka Sharma shaming others who failed to put trash in the bin. Well, to start with, it encourages people to throw out their trash, as one big non-segregated pile. In contrast, the model which Haritha Keralam mission has been promoting wants people to segregate their waste. A home which has its own compost pit, kitchen bin or biogas plant, will never have to depend on litter bins for disposing of its food and other organic waste. Plastic and other inorganic waste can be given at material recovery facilities. In the capital city, locating these have now been made easy to locate with the Smart Thiruvananthapuram app.

The central government survey about waste management also asks citizens whether they know if the waste goes to a landfill, a dumpsite or a processing plant.

Cities like Thiruvananthapuram are living proof of how big a folly centralised plants are. The capital city has stood up from the fall that Vilappilsala was, evolving its waste management system. Such a system helps prevent more waste from reaching the street. There are lawns and small roadside gardens on former dumpsites in Thiruvananthapuram which show the transformation of streets and its people. The cities in Kerala have been chosen as the cleanest in the country by a survey conducted by Down to Earth. So when a survey puts a waste processing plant and litter bins at the core of its assessment system, how discouraging would that be for Kerala.

The survey is rooting for a system that allows people to litter. It doesn't recognise the good work that has gone into source level waste management. What's more, it happens through a telephone call, and you can answer either in English or Hindi. If you know only Malayalam, they won't have anyone to answer you. The answers anyway fall on deaf ears.