According to the Swachh Survekshan 2022 results, Mokokchung is nowhere near the top cleanest towns in the NE region. In fact, it seems Mokokchung is performing from bad to worse. Swachh Survekshan is a ranking exercise taken up by the Government of India to assess rural and urban areas for their levels of cleanliness and active implementation of Swachhata mission initiatives in a timely and innovative manner. The President of India formally released the Swachh Survekshan 2022 dashboard on October 1 and gave away the top 12 awards. In an impressive display of sustainability and good governance, Indore, the city of lakes and palaces, walked away with the Cleanest City title for the sixth consecutive year, in the ‘more than 1 lakh population’ category. Indore further cemented its position by emerging as India’s first 7-star Garbage Free city. Over the years, Swachh Survekshan (SS) has emerged as an effective tool for transforming the urban landscape. This year’s Survekshan participated by 4,355 towns and cities, also saw an unprecedented number of citizens’ feedback – over 9 crores, compared to 5 cores last year. Nagaland, as expected, did not make any commendable show. Mokokchung, our beloved town, was ranked 4249 out of 4354 towns and cities assessed in the 2022 cleanliness survey.
As per the survey report, Mokokchung scored less than 25% in the following parameters: Segregated Door to door waste collection, Cleanliness of public toilets, Cleanliness of residential area, Daily sweeping in residential areas, Non Availability of open garbage dumps, and Citizen grievance redressal. Mokokchung also scored less than 50% in the Cleanliness of market areas parameter. Mokokchung did pretty well in the parameters of Cleanliness of roads and city beautification, scoring more than 50% and also scored more than 75% in the parameters of Cleanliness of drains and Cleanliness of water bodies. These scores are as per the Swachh Survekshan dashboard. Mokokchung was ranked 25 in the ‘less than fifty thousand population’ category of the NE region.
It is to be noted that the cities were ranked based on three parameters: service-level progress based on data provided by urban local bodies, certification based on waste management, sanitation (garbage-free city and open defecation-free categories) and citizens feedback and engagement (citizen voice category). Maybe there were some inadvertent lapses while providing the data, one would wish to believe. It is difficult to agree that Mokokchung is doing so badly in terms of cleanliness. Maybe we are. Much has been talked about cleanliness, and much has been said about Mokokchung as being one of the cleanest towns in Nagaland. Yet, the Swachh Survekshan 2022 results tell a completely different story.
In order to make a real impact, it is now time for Mokokchung to do things differently. First of all, before we even think about making Mokokchung the cleanest town, we need proper planning. Here, it would be wise to hire some experts. Or at least rope in the service of volunteer consultants. We seriously need subject matter experts to help us understand where we are doing things wrong. Unless we know where we are lagging and what we are doing wrong, unless we understand how to do things right, just blindly laboring to keep the town clean is not going to help.