If you can discern the presence of disproportionately more temples than public toilets; wide streets; tri-segregated waste bins lining the intersections of lanes and roads; the selling of meat concealed by humongous black cloths; mannequins, automobiles, absolutely any entity at all being adorned with orange flags depicting the Hindu God, Ram, you have successfully reached Indore. Welcome. Officially known as the cleanest city of India, this city boasts being free of open defecation, of possessing a minimal Air Quality Index (AQI) ranging from 50-80, source segregation of waste, and the list is interminable.

But, what does it mean to be the cleanest city of India? What are we cleaning? And for whom? Who gets to reap the benefits and who is burdened with the colossal task of cleaning? Let us find out.

We must continually engage in a process of challenging the veil of familiarity which we possess when it comes to seeing. This is why it becomes imperative to scrutinise Indore’s continual status as the cleanest city of India. For the past seven years, Indore has been winning the ‘Swachh Survekshan Award’ for being the cleanest city of India. Conducted by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs since 2016, under the ambit of the Swachh Bharat Mission, Swachh Survekshan, is, purportedly, the world’s largest urban sanitation and cleanliness survey. Swachh Survekshan has particular categories on the basis of which it marks and subsequently ranks the cleanliness of cities. 

The main and the sub categories are as follows:  1) service level progress, 2) certification, and 3) citizens’ voices.

Service level progress incorporates door-to-door collection of waste, which has been segregated at source, plastic waste, municipal solid waste processing (wet, dry, sanitary and domestic hazardous waste), cleanliness of public areas, zero waste events, construction of accessible public toilets, Safaimitra Suraksha (protection of sanitation workers), mechanised cleaning of sewers and septic tanks, and so forth.

Citizens’ voice encompasses citizen engagement and feedback, grievance redressal through Swachhata App, and so forth.

However, the conundrum arises when one begins to scrutinise the matter. It is only then that it dawns upon us we only see that which is shown to us; we see that which is made present. Vision is learned and cultivated, not simply a given.

Although citizen feedback occupies a cardinal position in the scoring system, out of the 36 residents, it was only 20 Savarnas, who are residents of elite gated colonies in Indore, such as Vijay Nagar, Nipania, and so forth, who answered affirmatively as to whether their feedback upon the maintenance of urban waste disposal system was ever solicited.

Thus, one could argue that the cleanliness of, what is officially termed as, the cleanest city of India, which is made possible by the interminable efforts of Dalits, can only be accessed by the Savarnas of Indore.

What the mainstream discourse fails to bring into discussion is the socio-cultural politics underpinning the seemingly neutral proclivity towards cleanliness and hygiene. Like any other Indian State, the hegemonic caste group of Indore, Savarnas, possess a frightening propensity for maintaining cleanliness and hygiene as it relates to their notions of ‘purity’ and ‘pollution’. By means of a wide assortment of religious scriptures, Savarnas are indoctrinated into stringently differentiation between purity and pollution, in an effort to maintain the perpetual purity and potency, which they believe is concomitant with their caste. Thus, the fervent movement for cleaning Indore no longer remains circumscribed to a mere objectively, biological, scientifically hygienic realm, but gets plunged into a socio-cultural discourse on casteism and classism.

Furthermore, while conducting thematic analysis, the classist-casteist orientation of such an aesthetic predilection became evident. This is because, upon being asked, “Is it imperative for you to be clean? If yes, why so?”, albeit both administrative officials as well sanitation workers answered affirmatively, there remained a vast gulf of chasm between their reasoning. The following excerpts instantiate the fundamental ethos of both the groups, in relation to the aforementioned question:

Administrative Officials: It is an integral component of my faith. My appearance is the first impression that people will have of me, thus, I must make the effort of being clean and hygienic. It makes me look smart and engenders people to respect me.

Sanitation workers: By remaining clean, I am able to ensure that neither will I fall sick nor will be a possible vector for spreading illness to my family members. This helps in saving a lot of money by curbing visiting to the hospital.

  Thus, it becomes clear how upper-caste people consider cleanliness and the associated notion of “purity” to be a cardinal component of their faith, which must not be violated under any circumstances. These are the same religious norms which dictate their purportedly merely aesthetic predilection for a pristine and hygienic appearance. On the other hand, as opposed to highlighting religious considerations, sanitation workers emphasised upon the practical aspect of how maintaining hygiene helps them circumvent potential illness, in an endeavour to restrain medical spending, the pecuniary aspect of which they fulfil from their own pockets as they are not provided any healthcare insurance, even though they are attached to government organisations.

The inner dynamics of the administrative process of cleanliness is also riddled with casteism. While most of the bureaucratic positions are occupied by Savarnas, sanitation workers hail from SC/ST/OBC communities. As a matter of fact, all 35 sanitation worker respondents for this study mentioned that even either/both of their parents were also employed as sanitation workers, thus being reflective of systemic casteism and marginalisation. One of my respondents mentioned, “When my husband, who was a sanitation worker here died due to occupational ailments, I had to ask Indore Municipal Corporation for a job in order to keep the family running. I thought that it was only common-sense that they would offer some other job given my husband’s history. Nevertheless, I was told that on account of paucity of qualifications, the only job that could be given to me was that of a sanitation worker. The worst part is that even though I have the same job as that of my late-husband, I am being paid much less.” This reflects the caste-based and gender-based inequities that the system perpetuates.

It is officially claimed that all sanitation workers, who are attached to government organisations, are provided with protective equipment (shower caps for hair, gloves for hands, masks to cover the mouth, aprons) in order to guarantee a safeguarding of their bodies, essentially their lives, during their working hours. Out of the 35 sanitation workers I interviewed, only 2 of them, who were also attached to Indore Municipal Corporation, had protective gear on, and that only on their heads. The others mentioned that they were never given any such provisions.

Nonetheless, elite Savarnas’ unnecessary aestheticizing process does not merely remain circumscribed to Indore; such an effort possesses a historical precedent in India. Any such entity, which transgresses the ruling dispensation’s circumscriptions of “the aesthetically pleasing” and is accordingly perceived by them as being concomitant with poverty or “pollution”, is ubiquitously conceptualised as a monstrosity that must be systematically concealed. This gets further buttressed by the fact that there exists a separate, dedicated wing of the Indore Municipal Corporation which is aimed at the eradication of hawkers and street animals, which becomes highly ironic taking into consideration that Indore is known for its street food.

The contradiction emerges thus: Even though Savarnas hail the importance of ‘cleaning’ as a process, it is the same Savarnas who discriminate against and categorically differentiate themselves from those who are perpetually engaged in the cleaning process. Paradoxically, then, in accordance with the Savarna (il)logic, it is the very engagement in the cleanliness process that “contaminates” sanitation workers. In addition to this, even after perpetually emphasising upon the importance of the work which sanitation workers do, all the Savarnas made it clear that they would never take up such a job. One particular respondent went as far as to say, “The work of sanitation is suited for some particular castes. If we take up their jobs, how will they earn a livelihood?”

It is not just lower-caste people whom Savarnas are trying to divest of possessing any form of power and agency, but also other marginalised groups, such as the Muslim community. This became clear upon my visit to Azad Nagar, which is a predominantly Muslim residential locality in Indore.

A 40-year-old male resident of Azad Nagar said, “You can see it for yourself. No one bothers cleaning these areas. I bet if the authorities would have visited these localities then Indore would have been called the ‘dirtiest city of India’.

 As can be clearly discerned from this picture, the visuals from Azad Nagar can be significantly juxtaposed with the Hindu majority neighbourhoods of Indore. It is not just that the amount of debris openly lying in this suburb is significantly higher but the patterns of waste and sanitation management, urban development, and so forth, are markedly dichotomous. For instance, the chambers used for drainage here remain overflowing.

A 65-year-old female resident of Azad Nagar mentioned, “I do not bother complaining anymore. I had tried it in the past, multiple times, to no avail. Now, I have just accepted my conditions. On account of the poor drainage system, when it rains, our houses get flooded. The ruling dispensation and the municipal corporation must have helped other people, but it is most definitely not us.”

Thus, we must divulge the conceptual categories of ‘cleanliness’ and ‘hygiene’ from their ostensibly strict empirically physiological associations, and problematise them in accordance with socio-cultural contexts. Therein, instead of directing public money to the facile, physical metamorphosis of the city in order to make it seem more appealing to visitors and ranking organisations, tangible grassroot-level changes must be enacted as the first step in our movement towards attaining holistic equity for all.

         [Author’s Note: This article is based on my rendezvous with Indore, wherein I was able to interview 35 sanitation workers and 12 administrative officials, who are attached to the Indore Municipal Corporation, and 36 residents of variegated residential colonies.]