Cleaning an Indian City: A Case of Indore Municipal Corporation

Abstract

The case is based on Indore Municipal Corporation, a city government in Madhya Pradesh, India. It revolves around the challenges a city government navigated through to become the cleanest city in India in the cleanliness ranking (Swachh Sarvekshan). In 2014, the Indian government launched the Clean India Mission. The cleanliness of cities was assessed in this mission based on several metrics, and Indore was placed 25th in 2016 among 73 cities and has continued to rank first in the country in subsequent years. Waste management was a major problem for the city, and the key to waste management is waste segregation. In order to transform, Indore had to go for segregated waste collection from residential and commercial sectors. Waste segregation cannot happen without effective citizen engagement as it is the citizens who generate waste and if they collect it in a segregated manner at their end the disposal can also happen in a similar fashion. This requires mobilizing citizens towards a new habit. Mobilizing residents in a country and city with compounded diversity in literacy, education, culture, religious views and customs was a complicated undertaking that required significant investment and political resolve. Also, before involving the community, the system needs to be redesigned so that it aligns with the altered practice at the citizens’ end. Citizens need to believe that their efforts were manifesting into something fruitful for society. The Municipal Commissioner was in a dilemma as to what kind of engagement strategy would work. Would information, education and communication be enough, or it required something more and beyond. This case tries to demonstrate the specific challenges and impacts that such a campaign brings and the learnings it generates in terms of citizen engagement, institutional arrangements and mechanisms of governance to benefit most and importantly envisage how the change can be sustained for long.