Monday Musings: PMC’s effort to clean-up Pune is genuine

There is clearly a determined effort on the part of Pune municipal commissioner Saurabh Rao to take up the challenge of ensuring cleaner streets and neighbourhoods to improve the city’s rankings on the Swachh Survekshan index

Is the city looking cleaner than before?

Getting a good ranking for cities under the Swachh Survekshan survey will not be easy with a new methodology adopted by the central government. (Shankar Narayan/HT PHOTO)

I can’t say this with 100% accuracy for the entire city, but I do see a change. I have been observing the streets very closely - mostly the same sections that I travel through regularly and I find that there is a perceptible change and greater efficiency in the solid waste management system.

I find a determined effort on the part of Pune municipal commissioner Saurabh Rao to take up the challenge of ensuring cleaner streets and localities in Pune, and improving the city’s rankings on the Swachh Survekshan index for Indian cities.

As we are all aware, Pune’s rankings slipped from a promising 10 in 2018 to a dismal 37 in 2019. This brought in lot of criticism, especially as an additional Rs 100 crore was pumped in by Adar Poonawalla Clean City Initiative to ensure better solid waste management in the city. How come then that Pune’s rankings slipped so horribly? Was it because the previous rankings were based on slick power-point presentations rather than the facts on the ground? That is what it looked like.

However, a few weeks ago, Rao had called a meeting of city editors in which he, along with the PMC’s solid waste management chief, Dnyaneshwar Molak, outlined the renewed efforts of the PMC to ensure greater cleanliness in the city. The top officials of the department were present and Rao displayed a sense of determination to get things going.

Getting a good ranking for cities under the Swachh Survekshan survey will not be easy with a new methodology adopted by the central government. There is more emphasis now on the public perception of whether a city is truly on the path to cleanliness or not. The rankings will not be based on powerpoint presentations, slick reports, claims made by a civic body and some cursory survey.

If Pune has to improve its rankings, the civic body now has no option but to demonstrate results. There will be greater emphasis on getting the residents to segregate garbage efficiently, process it within the premises of large housing societies; ensure a more efficient system of garbage collection; elimination of garbage bins and enforcement in terms of preventing illegal dumps from coming into being.

The civic body will also be expected to ensure cleanliness and maintenance of public urinals. Steps have been taken by the PMC in this direction too.

It would not be an exaggeration to say that this is perhaps for the first time that a municipal commissioner has taken up the challenge of better waste management for the city. Thanks to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Swacch Bharat movement and its enforcement by the Ministry of Urban Affairs, there is a distinct opportunity for Pune to become cleaner and greener.

At least three illegal garbage dumps have been cleared of the nuisance by the initiatives of this newspaper. The most noteworthy of these is the clearing of the garbage dump on Park Road in the Khadki-Aundh area where wheelchair-bound residents of the Paraplegic Rehabilitation Centre for ex-soldiers were forced to pass by this dump day in and day out. Officials from the Khadki Cantonment Board took decisive action after the matter was persistently raised by this newspaper.

The civic body’s efforts to keep our streets and localities clean are dependant heavily on a matching response from the residents. Each household needs to take extra efforts to follow the solid waste management protocol. It is this combined effort that will make Pune a better city for all of us.

abhay.vaidya@hindustantimes.com