How does Indore do it?

Indore bags the cleanest city award for the seventh year in a row. A look at its strategy.

Indore was not always clean. It scaled up from the 149th position on the Clean City Index in 2014 to 25th in 2016 and finally bagged the 1st position in 2017. | Photo Credit: By Special Arrangement

Most Indian cities are known for urban filth and the defiance of civic rules. In this scenario, for six years in a row, one city, Indore, has won the first position among hundreds of aspiring municipalities. I studied dozens of publications and newspaper stories that described Indore’s Solid Wate Management (SWM), but not one explained how the municipal staff and citizens were compelled to listen. What worked?

WATCH:

Indore’s green revolution: Exploring the city’s cleanliness strategy | Video Credit: Presented by Abhinav Chakraborty, Camera by Thamodharan B, Edited by Sambavi Parthasarathy

In Delhi—where I live—municipal officials shrugged off Indore’s achievement, saying it was possible because the population was not even a fifth of Delhi’s. I was not convinced. Late last year, a chance visit to Indore allowed me to see things for myself. I asked Harshika Singh, the Municipal Commissioner of Indore, to let me visit a few sites and see for myself how things worked. Before flying out of Delhi, I got a call from an official in the Indore Municipal Corporation (IMC). Shraddha Tomar, the Corporation’s SWM expert, gave me the chronology of Indore’s fight for cleanliness.

As a former bureaucrat, I am hardwired to doubt rosy stories. I also recalled what Raghuram Rajan, the erstwhile Governor of the Reserve Bank of India, had written about Indore in his book, The Third Pillar: “People treated Indore as a vast public garbage dump…. Stray animals—dogs, cows, goats, and pigs—roamed freely, eating the garbage, and adding their excrement to the mix. Some poor people, who did not have access to toilets, defecated in the open, in vacant fields or on public drains….” the economist had bemoaned.

Shraddha told me that before 2015, only 30 per cent of the employees came to work and protests and PILs were common. Everything changed only after the election of the new Mayor-in-Council, Malini Gaud, followed by the posting of a new Municipal Commissioner, Manish Singh. Both came on the heels of the newly launched Swachh Bharat Mission. “While the mayor handled the anti-reform backlash, Manoj Singh coordinated the cleanliness drive. The two made a great team,” Shraddha said.

Since it is unusual for a bureaucrat to be remembered years after his transfer, it spurred me to locate Manish Singh. He said something that stuck in my mind: “Madam, all city sanitation work must start by 5 am and get completed by 7 am. I used to be on the road every day at 4 am, rain or shine, summer, or winter. Once the Commissioner is himself there, no engineer, officer or support staff will remain absent. The message travels down the line,” he explained.

Major milestones

Indore was not always clean. It scaled up from the 149th position on the Clean City Index in 2014 to 25th in 2016 and finally bagged the 1st position in 2017. Since then, no one has beaten it, although this year Surat tied for first place.

In reply to a questionnaire, IMC sent detailed responses. Historically, according to the response, the years 2015 to 2016 were spent mapping each of Indore’s 86 city wards to plan the collecting, transporting, segregating, and recycling of over 1000 tons of municipal waste that is generated daily across the city. It was only after mapping and calculating the capability of different vehicles to travel door-to-door and manoeuvre the narrowest of streets that a fleet of 800 mini-tippers, dumpers, compactors, containerized tippers, hook loaders and even CNG rickshaws was ordered.

Indore’s 19 administrative zones have been entrusted to four NGOs and presently some 600 volunteers cover specific beats, on foot. | Photo Credit: By Special Arrangement

The next four years were spent on awareness building, using four NGOs to sensitise the communities residing in a cluster of wards. An “Indore 311” helpline app was launched to promote communication with the public. A bio-CNG plant and a dry waste processing plant were commissioned—both as public-private ventures. The CNG generated by the 18000 capacity wet-waste plant was purchased by the IMC at concessional rates and is used to run 150 city buses a day.

Interestingly, given the high voltage fights over stray animals that are playing out in several cities, IMC approved a no-stray-animal policy without a fuss and has stood by it. In my visits around Indore, by car or on foot, I have not seen a single stray animal on the roads or markets.

Bioremediation of legacy waste and the phasing out of single-use plastic are two important initiatives started by several Municipal Corporations, whether ordered by the National Green Tribunal or under public pressure. In Delhi, while 58 trommels are trying to reduce the size of three landfills at Bhalaswa, Ghazipur, and Okhla, and indeed ~100 lakh metric tonnes have been bio-mined by now, nearly twice that volume has still to be removed. In just one colony of Delhi where I live, there are six dhalaos (huge brick structures) for some 12,000 households.

At these dhalaos, stacks of garbage await packaging and dispatch to the waste-to-energy plants. In contrast, Indore has no landfill (except for inerts), and there are no garbage dumps or dhalaos anywhere in the city, leave alone inside residential colonies. Every scrap is reused or priced for sale or recycling.

HOW INDORE DID IT

Six lessons from India’s cleanest city

1. Segregation and daily garbage collection are a must. Citizens will comply when enforcement is strict.

2. User fees, sale of waste by-products, and collection of fines make the Indore model financially viable and replicable.

3. Local NGOs can be used to modify citizen behaviour in a sustained way.

4. Waste collection should be done by the Corporation and not outsourced.

5. Authority and continuity in political leadership: Indore’s Mayor-in-Council stayed for a full five years.

6. Public cooperation: Build the average citizen’s sense of ownership in project.

Circular economy in waste

An important feature is that Indore’s circular economy makes trading in waste remunerative. But how did Indore’s citizens accept IMC’s six-bin waste segregation instruction? The logic was explained by Captain Sunpreet (former army officer) who works in one of Indore’s four NGOs. “Unsegregated, it is just trash, but once it is segregated it becomes gold! You don’t need to spend a penny. Investors will line up to establish waste processing facilities but only if you can give them segregated waste,” he said.

At the dry segregation facility in Indore, there is a huge overhead board listing 72 different items and their sale prices fixed by the Corporation. | Photo Credit: By Special Arrangement

At a ward-level segregation facility, operating discreetly under a flyover, Capt. Sunpreet said: “The money lies in resale and recycling waste, which is why we prescribe so many containers.” One bin is for wet waste, a second for paper, a third for plastics, a fourth for domestic hazardous material (like tablets or chemicals), a fifth for sanitary waste (menstrual waste, condoms, syringes, diapers, and cotton), and the sixth bin is for electronics like TVs, laptops, printers, and their components. “100 per cent of the waste is collected by the municipal staff—not by outsourced agencies, as in Delhi,” he explained.

At the dry segregation facility, there is a huge overhead board listing 72 different items and their sale prices fixed by the Corporation. While the wet waste is sent for composting or for producing gas to the bio-CNG facility, the money earned from the sale of rubber, plastic soles, bulbs, toothbrushes, cardboard, metal, glass, and paper goes into the municipal coffers and is ploughed back into keeping the city clean.

Policy on user charges

Indore generates enough funds from the sale of waste but also from property tax, user charges, Extended Producer Responsibility (EPR) credits, carbon credits, premiums, fees, fines, and organic fertilizer to manage city cleaning from its earnings. In this, it is far ahead of all other cities, even the runners-up. The monthly fee for collecting segregated household garbage ranges from Rs.60 to Rs.150 per household and everyone pays.

The biggest difference between Indore and other cities is that Indore recycles and sells whatever can be salvaged and makes it financially remunerative. In most other cities—including Delhi—the wet and dry household waste even if it is handed over in two bags, is sorted out by individual garbage collectors (who are not Corporation staff) and they extract what can be salvaged. But thereafter, the entire garbage is again remixed in the dhalaos before it is baled up and dispatched to the waste-to-energy plants. This mixing up is wasteful.

In Indore, the household wet waste goes to the bio-CNG plant for conversion into gas while all else is sold by the Corporation itself.

The biggest difference between Indore and other cities is that the wet and dry household waste of every household is sorted by the garbage collectors to extract what can be salvaged. Then the entire garbage is remixed by the garbage collector before it is baled up and dispatched to the waste-to-energy plants. | Photo Credit: By Special Arrangement

IMC generates around 120 tonnes of organic manure per day, of which 30 per cent is used and 70 per cent is sold. The sale proceeds offset the cost of running the bio-CNG wet waste processing plant. In addition, the sludge that accumulates after sewage treatment is dried by radiation technology and sold for organic cultivation and landscaping. I could not find any other city that trades in manure so systematically and on such a big scale.

NGOs as good cops

Among all forms of pollution, including air, water, or noise pollution, solid waste tops the list in magnitude and visibility. Unlike vehicular or industrial emissions, residue burning, construction dust, or water pollution caused by mixture of sewage or industrial effluent in drainage water, the management of solid waste is the most difficult. Because one has to deal with individual householders, who dislike sermons. Early on, IMC engaged NGOs to carry out public awareness campaigns. Currently, four NGOs (Basix, Divine, Feedback, and HMS) are responsible for handholding citizens. They conduct training and demonstration programmes across neighbourhoods and even individual households. They also teach best practices to the IMC staff. The Corporation slaps fines on recalcitrant households while the NGO approach is soft, explaining how composting and segregation can be done at home.

Indore’s 19 administrative zones have been entrusted to four NGOs and presently some 600 volunteers cover specific beats, on foot. Their performance is judged on four yardsticks: adequacy of training given to the households, percentage of waste segregated at source and recycled by the ward, reduction in per capita waste generated, and citizen satisfaction. The IMC relies on the before-after pictures uploaded by citizens on the 311 app. Some other cities have begun using the NGO strategy to sensitize the public.

IMC is among the few cities earning Carbon and EPR Credits (for plastic waste) and is extending consultancy support to 30 urban local bodies, including on how carbon credits can be earned. A slew of cities both in India and abroad have availed the consultancy, which includes Ahmedabad, Surat, Pune, Navi Mumbai, Mysuru, Chandigarh, Vijayawada, and Rajahmundry in India, and Colombo (Sri Lanka), Dhaka (Bangladesh), Kathmandu (Nepal), Kigali (Rwanda), Dar es Salaam (Tanzania), and Accra (Ghana).

In most cities, ragpickers play an important link in the waste segregation cycle, but are marginalised by society. By fortifying them with safety training, identity cards, uniforms, and badges and deploying them at the garbage transfer stations and wet waste processing units, Indore has given these near social outcasts official status and dignity.

No one is above the law

The Solid Waste Management Rules, 2016, and the Environment Protection Act, 1986, give legislative powers to all municipal corporations to levy spot fines but, apprehensive about public backlash, few cities have increased the outdated fines. In Indore, the powers for fining range from Rs.100-5000 for a Chief Sanitary Inspector, Rs.50,000 for a Health Officer, and up to Rs.1,00,000 for the Additional Commissioner of the Corporation.

The Chappan Dukane (56 shops) area in Indore is a charming city meeting point, where 6ft × 6ft stalls sell delicious vegetarian snacks and tandoori chai in a no squelch, no dust, no flies environment. | Photo Credit: By Special Arrangement

CCTV cameras and door-to-door inspections verify whether the six-bin segregation is being followed. Around 6,000 spot fines a year were once imposed but, with constant oversight, this number has halved. IMC says the judiciary and the police too with constant oversight are more supportive of their waste management initiatives.

Did Indori culture help?

Like all visitors to Indore, I visited the Chappan Dukane (56 shops) area, a charming city meeting point, where 6ft × 6ft stalls sell delicious vegetarian snacks and tandoori chai in a no squelch, no dust, no flies environment. A few old-timers in the market association spoke of the Indori culture in which respect for the administration is a notable element.

Commissioner Harshika Singh said, “Ahilyabai Holkar is even today remembered as a just and benevolent ruler of Indore. Her legacy of good administration resonates with citizens. They gladly donate bricks, cement, and other commodities to get their requests for minor municipal repairs expedited.”

The writer was formerly Secretary in the Ministry of Health and former Chief Secretary, Delhi.