Modi begins Clean India implementation : Report

The Prime Minister Narendra Modi has directed his team of technocrats, economists, bureaucrats and social workers to formulate a need-based plan to effectively implement his Clean India Campaign (CIC) under which he wants to banish manual scavenging, open defecation and cleanse the rivers.

The Team Modi wants to adopt development models of Amsterdam, Singapore, Freiburg (Germany) and Kobe (Japan) for Indian cities. The Prime Minister, having a 100 plus advisors, has asked his team to draw up a list of tasks that need to be taken up for the city on priority basis to implement the CIC on a war footing with building toilets for women topping the list.

Toilet tops agenda

According to the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO), the Modi Government has pledged to ensure that India becomes an “open-defecation free nation”. Modi has already announced that nobody will defecate in open spaces anywhere in India. Lack of toilets in the schools is one of the primary reasons for high ratio of school drop rate in India.

In Gujarat, the government constructed 76,000 toilets in schools that resulted in drastic reduction in the school dropout ratio of girls. As Modi has emphasised ‘nari-sanman’ and ‘nari-gaurav,’ the Team Modi is working out 100% toilet solution in India. Under the first phase of CIC, the sanitation and sewerage facilities will be provided to over 36 million households in the country.

To add momentum to his CIC, the Modi Government will also introduce “Sanitation Ratings” for different urban areas. The Government will measure and rank the cities and reward the best performing ones.

The CIC envisages launching of sanitation projects in 1,000 Indian cities. The other primary goal of the mission is to end manual scavenging across the country and construct 200,000 toilets for women in 5,000 villages. The implementation of the project would follow the P4-Model: people-public sector-private sector-partnership.

Uma to rejunevate Ganga

Altogether 60 flyovers will be constructed in Varanasi connecting the two banks of the Ganga River. To ensure that the Ghats of the River Ganga in Varanasi are spic and span, Uma Bharti as the Minister for Water Resources, River Development and Ganga Rejuvenation has decided to work out a modality to crack down on commercial activities on the Ghats.

The new Government, deciding to create a Clean India by 2019, is poised to launch the ‘Mahatma Gandhi Clean India Programme’ from Varanasi. Besides cleaning Ganga River, moves are also afoot to restructure the traffic system of Varanasi to stop emission of CO2.

Varanasi is the beginning. Modi wants to build “100 new cities” which will be the model ones having high-speed rail network, modern roads and transport systems, total urban sanitation and presence of all infrastructural facilities.

Energy Revolution

The Modi Government wants to bring about an “Energy Revolution” to make India a leader of the global low carbon economy by promoting clean energy and tune the country’s climate policy to promote investment benefits for generating renewable energy.

Modi has already inducted his team of urban planning and sanitation to work out modalities and financial requirement for improving the urban infrastructure in 500 cities in the first phase. These urban infrastructure facilities include: drinking water, solid waste management, storm water drainage, roads, transport and street lights. The system of people owned public toilets may be introduced in a number of cities.

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