SHIVANI SINGH

For a city that launched the nationwide Swachh Bharat campaign three years ago, Delhi should have set the benchmark for any cleanliness contest by now.

Instead, in the Swachh Survekshan ranking of 434 cities released last week, the area under New Delhi Municipal Council -- a VIP zone where at a police station Prime Minister Narendra Modi wielded the broom to start the Clean India drive -- slipped down to the seventh spot. Last year, it came fourth when 73 cities were surveyed.

The rest of Delhi didn’t even make it to the top 100. The municipalities of east, south and north Delhi stood 196th, 202nd and 279th, while smaller towns such as Karnal, Kanpur, Gurgaon and Faridabad fared better.

The survey itself has been criticised for not following the progressive parameters of waste management. The Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) says the top three cities in the survey – Indore, Bhopal and Vishakhapatnam – do not segregate waste and dump it directly in landfills. In contrast, Alappuzha and Panjim, which have started segregation of waste at home and decentralised recycling and reuse of trash, have been ranked 380th and 90th.

Alappuzha and Panjim have no dumpsites or waste-to-energy plants because they do not need them. They convert their trash into compost or biogas and recycle plastic, glass, metals and papers, says the CSE