Cleanliness campaign: A grade for 953 Pune villages

Even as the district is gearing up to achieve the target under the Nirmal Gram project or open defecation free villages...

Even as the district is gearing up to achieve the target under the Nirmal Gram project or open defecation free villages,heres another marker from the government for the Sant Gadge Baba Gram Swachchata Abhiyan or the total village cleanliness campaign in which grades are given to those villages that have emerged clean villages, under this scheme. The district has 953 villages figuring in the A grade,followed by 357 in the B grade and 91 in the C grade.

The grades will boost our programme in the villages and help achieve the targets better, said state sanitation department coordinator Mallinath Kalshetty. Under the grades scheme,those villages that have scored above 60 per cent in the areas of water management,personal hygiene,toilets,non-conventional energy methods,family planning,solid and liquid waste management as well innovative projects have figured in the A grade while those scoring below 60 but above 50 is in the B category while those scoring below 50 has been bracketed in the C category,said Kalshetty. Among the 1,401 villages,Pune has a large share in the A category which shows good implementation of the project.

The Sant Gadge Baba Abhiyan rewards villages in the district,division and state levels. The district authorities will now try and get all the villages to the A level,he said.

Meanwhile,the Nirmal Gram Yojana,which highlights the issue of open defecation,has helped make 371 villages open defecation free while another 609 villages have applied. Each and every village is thoroughly monitored and only if they match the list,the grades are given,said Kalshetty of the scrutiny.

The campaign,which aims to see the village clean,is infused with tremendous sense of community spirit among the villages,their panchayats and village organisations. The scheme,which was launched by the government in 2000,is aimed at promoting a competitive spirit among villages to create a clean environment through self-initiatives.

In order to make the district an open defecation free district,the district collector had also introduced rules to change the apathetic attitude of the villagers towards this issue.

Both the Nirmal Gram and Sant Gadge Baba schemes have helped in rural sanitation. Kalshetty said that they have complemented each other. While Nirmal Gram addresses issues of fully sanitised and open defecation free panchayats,blocks and districts,the Sant Gadge Baba rewards gram panchayats based on certain indicators related to sanitation and good governance.

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