Swachh Survekshan Grameen rankings: Telangana tops, BJP-ruled States lag behind

Hyderabad: The much-hyped ‘double engine’ model of governance appears to be just a myth, if the performance of Bharatiya Janata Party-ruled States in the Swachh Survekshan Grameen (SSG) rankings issued by the union Ministry of Jal Shakti is any indication. On one hand, as the development and sanitation in Telangana’s villages helped the State lead […]

Hyderabad: The much-hyped ‘double engine’ model of governance appears to be just a myth, if the performance of Bharatiya Janata Party-ruled States in the Swachh Survekshan Grameen (SSG) rankings issued by the union Ministry of Jal Shakti is any indication.

On one hand, as the development and sanitation in Telangana’s villages helped the State lead the chart in the overall rankings of States and union Territories surveyed as part of the SSG assessment, BJP-ruled States, save for the second-ranked Haryana, fared poorly, with the ranks being Madhya Pradesh (9), Gujarat (10), Uttar Pradesh (18) and Karnataka (20).

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The Department of Drinking Water and Sanitation (DDWS), Ministry of Jal Shakti has been carrying out the Swachh Survekshan Grameen (SSG) campaign since 2018.

It started with assessment of 7,000 villages in 2018 while 17,559 villages were covered in 2022. For 2022, the task was commissioned to Ipsos Research Private Limited. The survey commenced on September 9, 2021 followed by State-level workshops from September 20 to November 30, 2021. The on-field data collection was carried out from December 2021 to April 2022.

Ranking of districts and States was done by analysing the data collected from multiple sources such as self-reporting by districts, data from SBM-G IMIS, district-level surveys of public places like schools, anganwadis, PHCs, Haat/bazaars, Panchayat Bhavans, survey of households and village level sanitation infrastructures and most importantly, citizens’ perception of Swachhata and their recommendations for improvement of the programme.

All these inspections were conducted by union government-nominated agencies and the rankings are issued by the Central Department of Drinking Water and Sanitation (DDWS).

Telangana secured the highest points of 971.62 out of a total score of 1000 marks in the country. Haryana, came second with 927.05 points, almost 44 points lesser than Telangana. Madhya Pradesh secured 821.58 points and Gujarat secured 819.33 points, way less than Telangana.

Karnataka, another BJP-ruled State, was ranked 20 in the SSG survey with the performance of its capital Bengaluru not being great either.

The situation of Bengaluru, touted to be a competitor to Hyderabad on many fronts, was perhaps described best in a tweet by Padma Shri awardee and former Infosys director TV Mohandas Pai.

“What a disgrace! India’s only global city, richest city has become a garbage city! We are ashamed! Karnataka CM Basavaraj S Bommai, Sir we need urgent reforms, strict action” Pai tweeted on Monday.

Telangana, the youngest State in the country, has on the other hand, silenced critics, with Municipal Administration and Urban Development Minister KT Rama Rao crediting the vision of Chief Minister K Chandrashekhar Rao.

“Best performing large State Telangana. The youngest State of India has truly come of age; setting new benchmarks and pioneering flagship projects that inspire the entire Nation. Kudos to Visionary Chief Minister K Chandrashekhar Rao garu” Rama Rao tweeted on Monday, sharing a tweet from the official Swachh Bharat Mission that announced the Best-performing State of the year in the large States
category.

Telangana excelled in SSG districts survey too

In the SSG districts survey too, Telangana has excelled with 31 districts from the State featuring in the top 50 districts across the country! The number of districts from BJP-ruled States in the list was confined to single digits as follows: Madhya Pradesh (4), Gujarat (2) and Haryana (7).