Make agents of public dirtiness pay

'A lavatory must be as clean as a drawing-room. I learnt this in the West.' No one can accuse Mohandas Gandhi of suffering from a colonial mindset. And, yet, 100 years after he shared this candid observation, and more than a decade after Swachh Bharat Abhiyan was launched, India remains a filthy society. Once that reality has been acknowledged, strategies to back up policy intent can be drawn and executed. Staggering apathy to civic sense contributes to public squalor. And this stubborn mindset is remarkably class and economy agnostic. Swachh Survekshan 2024-25 announced on Thursday has a good idea: to laud urban sanitation and public hygiene. But what is woefully lacking is punitive action against agents of public dirtiness.

Economic costs of poor sanitation as a share of GDP serve as a key marker of development. While advanced economies have achieved universal access to improved sanitation, coverage in the developing world drops to just half the population. Poor sanitation contributes significantly to the global disease burden, followed closely by productivity losses due to malnutrition. These, along with issues such as clean-up costs and impact on tourism, can amount to over 5% of GDP in developing economies.

The list of cleanest cities this year is topped by 8-time winner Indore, Surat and Navi Mumbai. In the 3-10-lakh population category, Noida secured the top spot as cleanest city, with Chandigarh coming in second, and Mysuru ranking third. In contrast, larger cities with legacy sanitation systems often struggle to upgrade their infrastructure. Since sanitation typically incurs a unit cost per person, the most effective approach is to integrate it into municipal budgets early and work on keeping costs low as cities grow. This results in long-term savings, particularly in clean-up expenses. But at the heart of the problem lies the paradox of citizens being obsessed with personal 'purity', while being blase about public cleanliness. This can change only with strong disincentives, not just incentives like ranking clean cities.