Ahmedabad ranks 43rd of 53 districts surveyed in Govt of India's cleanliness report

Score of 13 Gujarat districts out of 53 chosen for survey

By Rajiv Shah
A Government of India report has ranked Ahmedabad 43rd in its cleanliness survey of 53 districts it has selected for the purpose. Worse, Ahmedabad, which is desperately seeking world heritage tag from UNESCO, ranks poorer than all but one of the 13 districts chosen from Gujarat out of 53.
With a score of 71.6 out of 100, the survey finds Ahmedabad, the business capital of Gujarat, and sought to be projected as a model for urban India, performing worse than the tribal districts of Tapi and Narmada, with a score of 74.9 and 78 respectively. Only one district, Panchmahal, ranks worse than Ahmedabad, with a score of 64.1.
The best score in Gujarat is that of state capital Gandhinagar, 82.9. However, the survey finds Gandhinagar to rank 18th of the 53 districts surveyed. The best performer in India is Sindhudurg district of Maharashtra, with a score of 96.8. Next is Nadia district of West Bengal with a score of 96.8, followed by Satara district of Maharashtra with a score of 92.9 per cent.
Key parameters with weightage for the survey are: Percentage of households having access to Safe toilets and using them: 40; percentage of households having no litter around: 30; average score of cleanliness (out of 100) around public places: 20; and percentage of households having no wastewater around: 10.
If the survey is any indication, just about 63 per cent of Ahmedabad households have safe toilets and are using them. This is against 99 per cent in the best-performing district of Sindhudurg Maharashtra, followed by Nadia in West Bengal 97 per cent, and Satara in Maharashtra 96 per cent.

Several of Gujarat districts, in fact, perform better than Gujarat in having household toilets – Anand 65 per cent, Bharuch and Surat both 64 per cent, Kheda 66 per cent, Patan 68 per cent, Navsari 78 per cent, Gandhinagar and Mehsana 73 per cent each.
In the three other parameters used for the survey -- percentage of households having no litter around, average score of cleanliness (out of 100) around public places, and percentage of households having no wastewater around: 10 – Ahmedabad, interestingly, performs even worse.
Based on National Sample Survey (NSS) data collected last year, the report find that while 55.5 per cent of Gujarat’s households have sanitary households, in all, 96.2 per cent of the population either uses household or community toilets for defecation.
Titled “Swacch Survekshan” (Cleanliness Survey), the report was released by the Government of India’s Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation on September 10. As already reported variously, the report ranks Gujarat 14th in the number households using sanitary toilets in India. Sikkim ranks No 1, followed by Kerala. Both have 98.2 per cent and 97.6 per cent households using sanitary toilets.
Providing its “ranking methodology”, the report says, the “process and outcome indicators of the survey were conceived by the Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation, in association with the Quality Council of India” with the involvement of “150 assessors”, who were deployed to visit rural areas in 75 districts and collect sanitation related data.
“A special mobile based application was created for the collection of data. This application was installed on handheld tablets which were used to ensure that information collected was consistent by validating through geo-tagged pictures”, the report says.

Comments

The golden crop: How turmeric is transforming women's lives in tribal India

By Vikas Meshram* When the lush green fields of turmeric sway in the tribal belt of southern Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, and Gujarat, it is not merely a spice crop — it is the golden glow of self-reliance. In villages where even basic spices once had to be bought from the market, the very soil today is yielding a prosperity that has transformed the lives of thousands of families. At the heart of this transformation is the initiative of Vaagdhara, which has linked turmeric with livelihoods, nutrition, and village self-governance — gram swaraj.

Swami Vivekananda's views on caste and sexuality were 'painfully' regressive

By Bhaskar Sur* Swami Vivekananda now belongs more to the modern Hindu mythology than reality. It makes a daunting job to discover the real human being who knew unemployment, humiliation of losing a teaching job for 'incompetence', longed in vain for the bliss of a happy conjugal life only to suffer the consequent frustration.

Authoritarian destruction of the public sphere in Ecuador: Trumpism in action?

By Pilar Troya Fernández The situation in Ecuador under Daniel Noboa's government is one of authoritarianism advancing on several fronts simultaneously to consolidate neoliberalism and total submission to the US international agenda. These are not isolated measures, but rather a coordinated strategy that combines job insecurity, the dismantling of the welfare state, unrestricted access to mining, the continuation of oil exploitation without environmental considerations, the centralization of power through the financial suffocation of local governments, and the systematic criminalization of all forms of opposition and popular organization.

Buddhist shrines were 'massively destroyed' by Brahmanical rulers: Historian DN Jha

Nalanda mahavihara By Rajiv Shah Prominent historian DN Jha, an expert in India's ancient and medieval past, in his new book , "Against the Grain: Notes on Identity, Intolerance and History", in a sharp critique of "Hindutva ideologues", who look at the ancient period of Indian history as "a golden age marked by social harmony, devoid of any religious violence", has said, "Demolition and desecration of rival religious establishments, and the appropriation of their idols, was not uncommon in India before the advent of Islam".

Echoes of Vietnam and Chile: The devastating cost of the I-A Axis in Iran

By Ram Puniyani The recent joint military actions by Israel and the United States against Iran have been devastating. Like all wars, this conflict is brutal to its core, leaving a trail of human suffering in its wake. The stated pretext for this aggression—the brutality of the Ayatollah Khamenei regime and its nuclear ambitions—clashes sharply with the reality of the diplomatic landscape. Iran had expressed a willingness to remain at the negotiating table, signaling a readiness to concede points emerging from dialogue.

False claim? What Venezuela is witnessing is not surrender but a tactical retreat

By Manolo De Los Santos The early morning hours of January 3, 2026, marked an inflection point in Venezuela and Latin America’s centuries-long struggle for self-determination and independence. Operation Absolute Resolve, ordered by the Trump administration, constituted the most brutal and direct military assault on a sovereign state in the region in recent memory. In a shocking operation that left hundreds dead, President Nicolás Maduro and First Lady Cilia Flores were illegally kidnapped from Venezuelan soil and transported to the United States, where they now face fabricated charges in a New York federal detention facility. In the two months since this act of war, a torrent of speculation has emerged from so-called experts and pundits across the political spectrum. This has followed three main lines: One . The operation’s success indicated treason at the highest levels of the Bolivarian Revolution. Two . Acting President Delcy Rodríguez and the remaining leadership have abandone...

The selective memory of a violent city: Uttam Nagar and the invisible victims of Delhi

By Sunil Kumar* Hundreds of murders take place in Delhi every year, yet only a few incidents become topics of nationwide discussion. The question is: why does this happen? Today, the incident in Uttam Nagar has become the centre of national debate. A 26-year-old man, Tarun Kumar, was killed following a dispute that reportedly began after a balloon hit a small child. In several colonies of Delhi, slogans such as “Jai Shri Ram” and “Vande Mataram” are being raised while demanding the death penalty for Tarun’s killers. As a result, nearly 50,000 residents of Hastsal JJ Colony are now living in what resembles a state of confinement.

The price of silence: Why Modi won’t follow Shastri, appeal for sacrifice

By Arundhati Dhuru, Sandeep Pandey* In 1965, as India grappled with war and a crippling food crisis, Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri faced a United States that used wheat shipments under the PL-480 agreement as a lever to dictate Indian foreign policy. Shastri’s response remains legendary: he appealed to the nation to skip one meal a day. Millions of middle-class households complied, choosing temporary hunger over the sacrifice of national dignity. Today, India faces a modern equivalent in the energy sector, yet the leadership’s response stands in stark contrast to that era of self-reliance.

Love letters in a lifelong war: Babusha Kohli’s resistance in verse

By Ravi Ranjan* “War does not determine who is right—only who is left.” Bertrand Russell’s words echo hauntingly in our times, and few contemporary Hindi poets embody this truth as profoundly as Babusha Kohli. Emerging from Jabalpur, Madhya Pradesh, Kohli has carved a unique space in literature by weaving together tenderness, protest, and philosophy across poetry, prose, and cinema. Her work is not merely artistic expression—it is resistance, refuge, and a call for peace.

Search This Blog