Swachh Bharat Mission: A year on, only 6 states show Swachh promise

NEW DELHI: Only six states have shown visible improvement in cleanliness almost a year after the Swachh Bharat campaign was launched, while progress of other states and Union Territories has been marginal, an online survey touted as the biggest ever has found.

However, the biggest positive achievement in the past one year has been the "change of attitude and civic sense orientation of kids". About 51% respondents felt that the Swachh Bharat Mission has been effective in making school children aware and positively influencing their attitude/actions towards cleanliness and civic sense.

According to the survey conducted by citizen engagement platform LocalCircles, Gujarat, Chhattisgarh, Andhra Pradesh, Punjab, Karnataka and Himachal Pradesh have shown significant improvement. "Some of the states have shown visible improvements in their capital cities but their overall ranking has fallen as other cities in the state have performed poorly," a release issued by the organization said.

The report also says the absence of some of the most populous states such as Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Haryana besides Delhi in the visible improvement list indicates that there is still a lot of work to be done.

The survey got responses from over 40,000 citizens and 73% of them were from tier-I and tier-II cities in the age group of 18-50 years.

The survey that concluded on Saturday points out that the biggest negative has been the lack of engagement of urban local bodies in the making the NDA government's flagship programme a success. The survey said over 72% of the respondents felt their municipality did not engage citizens for cleanliness activities and awareness drives. Only 13% believe that the availability of public toilets has improved in their cities.