Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Friday launched the second phase of the Swachh Bharat Mission-Urban and the Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation, asserting that these missions were aimed at making the cities garbage free and water secure. In his address after launching SBM-U 2.0 and AMRUT 2.0 at the Ambedkar International Centre here, Modi said the new phases of these missions are also an important step in fulfilling dreams of B R Ambedkar. “It’s our privilege that today’s programme has been organised at the BR Ambedkar Centre. Babasaheb believed that urban development was pivotal to removing inequality,” Modi said.
The aim of Swachh Bharat Mission 2.0 is to make the cities garbage-free. “With this second phase, we are aiming to achieve sewage and safety management, making cities water-secure and ensuring that dirty nullahs don’t merge into rivers,” Modi said at the launch of the Swachh Bharat Mission-Urban 2.0 and AMRUT 2.0 in the Capital.
Moving on to talk about the humongous amount of waste products that the country processes each day, Modi said, “Today, India is processing about 1 lakh tonnes of waste every day. When we started the campaign in 2014, less than 20 per cent of the waste was being processed. Today, we are processing about 70 per cent of the daily waste; the next step is to take it to a complete 100 per cent.”
The Swachh Bharat Mission-Urban 2.0 envisions a plan to make all cities garbage-free by ensuring grey and black water management in all cities except those covered under AMRUT, a statement issued by the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) said. It also aims to make all urban local bodies with a population of less than 1 lakh Open Defecation Free (ODF), thereby achieving the vision of safe sanitation in urban areas. The mission will also focus on source segregation of solid waste, utilising the principles of the three ₹of reduce, reuse, recycle, scientific processing of all types of municipal solid waste, and remediation of legacy dumpsites for effective solid waste management. The outlay of the entire SBM-U 2.0 mission is around ₹1.41 lakh crore.
The Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation 2.0 mission, on the other hand, is focusing on providing 100 per cent coverage of water supply to all households in around 4,700 urban local bodies by providing about 2.68 crore tap connections and 100 per cent coverage of sewerage and septage in 500 AMRUT cities by providing around 2.64 crore sewer or septage connections, which will benefit more than 10.5 crore people in urban areas.
