The Secretary, Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA) launched the Swachh technology challenge, under the aegis of Swachh Bharat Mission - Urban 2.0 (SBM-U 2.0), on Monday, 6th December 2022 in New Delhi. The Joint Secretary, MoHUA, presented the outline and guidelines for conducting the challenge in the cities. This Challenge, introduced as part of Azadi@75 Swachh Survekshan 2022, the world’s largest urban cleanliness survey conducted by MoHUA, aims to create an enabling environment for promoting technological innovations in sanitation and waste management under SBM-U 2.0. The event was attended by Principal Secretary - Urban Development, SBM-U Mission Directors from States and Municipal Commissioners from ULBs, and representative from Agence Française de Développement (AFD).
Technology has played a critical role in achieving the outcomes of Swachh Bharat Mission - Urban in the last seven years with several initiatives such as Swachhata App, SBM-U Toilets on Google Maps, e-learning platform, Swachh Manch, the integrated SBM-Urban MIS portal Swachhatam and the recently launched state-of-art GIS platform, which have not only taken the Mission closer to citizens but have also enabled smart data-driven decision making, transparency, and robustness in Mission implementation.
Under SBM-U 2.0, special focus has been given to Technology promotion, innovation, and encouragement for social enterprises. Aligned to the Government’s vision of “AatmaNirbhar Bharat”, and “Make in India”, the SBM-U 2.0 encourages the adoption of locally innovated, cost-effective solutions and business models in sanitation and waste management.
Hon’ble Prime Minister’s in his latest episode of ‘Mann ki Baat’ emphasized that India is leading the way in the start-up world today and touched upon three aspects that matter a lot, for a country with a large youth population like ours – i) Ideas and Innovation, ii) the spirit of taking risks, and iii) Can Do Spirit. He further mentioned that startups are progressing very fast, and their reach has increased to even small towns of the country.
The small scale and private entrepreneurs and start-ups need to be brought on our side to contribute to the Mission, through investments in R&D, incubation facilities, technology challenges and facilitation for inclusion in GeM portal. In these times when startups are evolving fast and redefining the innovations ecosystem, there is a need to promote an enabling environment and capitalize on the Start-up movement through huge opportunities for entrepreneurship created by SBM-U 2.0.
The Swachh Technology Challenge, launched today, is another step towards ensuring smart governance in SBM-U 2.0 by incentivizing the technology ecosystem and social enterprises to help realize the Prime Minister’s vision of ‘Garbage Free Cities’. The Challenge aims to capitalize on the skills and expertise of this space to find cost-effective and implementable technology solutions that can be adopted and replicated at scale across urban India.
The themes of the Challenge are aligned to the key focus areas of the SBM-U 2.0 and are aimed at making waste management services truly safe and sustainable for our cities by improving waste management technologies. This will strengthen the waste management services sector and provide employment to large no. of people.
Active participation of cities in the Challenge will have a direct bearing on their performance in the ‘Citizen Engagement’ component of Swachh Survekshan 2022 and thus their overall ranking in the survey. This is a great opportunity especially for the start-ups selected by the States as they would have a direct entry as a participant in a national level Start-up challenge which is planned to be conducted by MoHUA in collaboration with AFD in January 2022.
As part of the program, Secretary MoHUA interacted with Principal Secretary - Urban Development of Maharashtra, CEO of Noida Authority, and Municipal Commissioners of Surat and Navi Mumbai, on their preparation for conducting the Swachh Technology Challenge in their ULB. The Deputy Municipal Commissioner of Greater Mumbai presented the work done for COVID Management in their ULB.