Indore
India’s ‘Cleanest City’ Fails The Test Of Life – OpEd
By Tang Lu
Polluted water killed 11 and made 2000 ill in Indore , a city in Madhya Pradesh that was declared “India’s Cleanest City” seven times
During my years in India, I personally witnessed the nationwide rollout of Prime Minister Modi’s “Swachh Bharat Mission” (Clean India Campaign). I traveled across multiple cities to observe the transformation firsthand.
In my view, the most significant achievement of this campaign has been a psychological one: it successfully elevated the collective consciousness regarding public hygiene and sanitation among Indians.
However, a shift in awareness does not automatically translate into a shift in infrastructure. India’s path to true cleanliness remains fraught with deep-seated structural challenges. The recent public health catastrophe in Indore—the very city hailed as the “Seven-Star” model of Indian urbanity—serves as a grim reminder. When the nation’s cleanest city stumbles so fatally over its own drinking water supply, it exposes a critical disconnect: the campaign has mastered the optics of hygiene, but it is yet to conquer the engineering of survival.
This article explores that disconnect, starting with the life of a man whose identity was defined by a broom, and ending with a city whose glory was undone by its own pipes.
The Artist and the Broom
Years ago, in a Mumbai school dedicated to the children of manual scavengers, I met Ramesh Haralkar. A social activist born into the Dalit community, Haralkar once dreamed of being a painter. Instead, to retain his government accommodation, he was forced to inherit his father’s municipal broom—a prerequisite established by Mumbai’s municipal corporation for sanitation worker housing.
Haralkar vowed his children would never walk this path; today, his sons have become journalists and visual storytellers. When I asked his views on the Swachh Bharat Mission, he harboured a profound skepticism that stays with me to this day:
“Indians often litter or defecate in the open because they know that people of my caste will always be there to clean up after them. As long as this structure exists, no amount of sweeping can truly clean this country.”
Polluted water killed 11 and made 2000 ill in Indore , a city in Madhya Pradesh that was declared “India’s Cleanest City” seven times
During my years in India, I personally witnessed the nationwide rollout of Prime Minister Modi’s “Swachh Bharat Mission” (Clean India Campaign). I traveled across multiple cities to observe the transformation firsthand.
In my view, the most significant achievement of this campaign has been a psychological one: it successfully elevated the collective consciousness regarding public hygiene and sanitation among Indians.
However, a shift in awareness does not automatically translate into a shift in infrastructure. India’s path to true cleanliness remains fraught with deep-seated structural challenges. The recent public health catastrophe in Indore—the very city hailed as the “Seven-Star” model of Indian urbanity—serves as a grim reminder. When the nation’s cleanest city stumbles so fatally over its own drinking water supply, it exposes a critical disconnect: the campaign has mastered the optics of hygiene, but it is yet to conquer the engineering of survival.
This article explores that disconnect, starting with the life of a man whose identity was defined by a broom, and ending with a city whose glory was undone by its own pipes.
The Artist and the Broom
Years ago, in a Mumbai school dedicated to the children of manual scavengers, I met Ramesh Haralkar. A social activist born into the Dalit community, Haralkar once dreamed of being a painter. Instead, to retain his government accommodation, he was forced to inherit his father’s municipal broom—a prerequisite established by Mumbai’s municipal corporation for sanitation worker housing.
Haralkar vowed his children would never walk this path; today, his sons have become journalists and visual storytellers. When I asked his views on the Swachh Bharat Mission, he harboured a profound skepticism that stays with me to this day:
“Indians often litter or defecate in the open because they know that people of my caste will always be there to clean up after them. As long as this structure exists, no amount of sweeping can truly clean this country.”
Fatal Flaws Beneath the “Seven-Star” Glory
Indore was supposed to be the exception. In the Swachh Bharat Mission, this Madhya Pradesh city won India’s cleanest city title for seven consecutive years, earned a seven-star “garbage-free” certification, and generated 90 million rupees annually through carbon credits. In 2021, Indore even became the first city in India to receive “Water Plus” certification for its outstanding performance in wastewater management.
But a tragedy in late 2025 shattered this myth. Starting in late December, residents of the Bhagirathpura area began experiencing diarrhea and complained of foul-smelling tap water, but officials turned a deaf ear. By early January 2026, at least 11 people had died (including a six-month-old infant), and over 2,000 fell ill.
The culprit: a police outpost toilet built directly above the main water supply pipeline—without a septic tank. Sewage had been seeping into cracked, 120-year-old pipes. When questioned, the Minister for Urban Development in Madhya Pradesh dismissed the issue as ‘utterly meaningless’—a contemptuous attitude that laid bare a shocking evasion of responsibility.
The Trap of Performative Politics: Gleaming Streets and Rotting Pipes
Indian policy commentator Ajay Prakash hit the nail on the head: “Clean streets are easy to photograph, but clean water pipes are not. That’s the disturbing truth behind the ‘Clean India’ campaign.”
From 2014 to 2024, the Indian government invested over 1.8 trillion rupees in the mission. However, the bulk of this went to toilet construction subsidies, rewards, and ranking competitions, while investment in invisible infrastructure like underground sewage networks remained minimal.
“Because pipes are underground and don’t photograph well,” Prakash noted sarcastically. “Awards are given based on what the camera can capture. Indore is clean on the surface but rotting from within.”
An editorial in The Economic Timessaid – “Cities love to flaunt rankings and report cards. But if what flows into homes is disease, not life, none of it matters.”
Indore’s water supply network is 120 years old, with many pipes in use for over 50 years, and drainage ditches laid directly above them. As early as 2019, India’s Comptroller and Auditor General flagged serious risks in Indore’s water management. Yet these warnings were ignored because they don’t appear in “cleanest city ranking” criteria.
Performance Over Human Accountability
Strategic advisor Srinath Sridharan coined a sharp acronym for this model: POHA—“Performance Over Human Accountability.”
POHA stands for Performance Over Human Accountability. It’s a critique of a governance model where visible metrics (like city rankings and toilet counts) are prioritized over the essential but invisible systems that sustain life (like sewage integrity and water safety). It explains why a ‘7-star’ city can win awards while ignoring 8 months of complaints about contaminated water.
Officials are rewarded for rankings and events—painted walls win applause, while sewage pipes do not. This creates an environment where immediate visible results are reinforced, while systems requiring sustained investment, like drinking water safety, are undervalued until they fail through disease and death.
The Double Deception of Inequality and Data
This tragedy hit Bhagirathpura, one of Indore’s poorest areas. Business Standard noted: “This reveals the vast inequality in access to municipal services between rich and poor.” The wealthy afford private purification; the poor suffer the consequences of municipal inertia.
The crisis also exposed data fabrication. The 2019 declaration of India being “Open Defecation Free” (ODF) lacked independent verification and was bound by a political deadline. Millions of toilets were built without water sources or sewers—what Prakash calls a “concrete joke.”
A National Wake-Up Call
Indore is not isolated. Outbreaks in Bhopal, Chennai, and a January 2026 typhoid outbreak in Gandhinagar (over 100 cases) show that sewage contamination of drinking water is a national crisis. India ranks 120th out of 122 countries in water quality, with nearly 70% of water contaminated.
The Times of India remarked sarcastically: “In India, if something seems too good to be true, unfortunately, it often is.”
From Optics to Systems: Redefining Cleanliness
When I recall Ramesh Haralkar’s words now, they take on new meaning. India’s cleanliness problem stems from a governance philosophy: prioritizing visible, short-term achievements while ignoring the invisible infrastructure that affects people’s lives.
The Indore tragedy sounds an alarm: a city that creates miracles in waste segregation yet cannot provide safe water is living a self-deceiving illusion. As Ajay Prakash summarized:
“Cleanliness is not a broom, not a ranking, not a speech. It’s about pipes, water supply, sewage treatment, and honesty. Until India understands this, the ‘Clean India’ campaign will forever remain the cleanest lie we ever applauded.”
True sanitation requires engineering integrity and institutional accountability—placing the daily protection of life at the core of governance. If India’s urban governance cannot shift from “performative politics” to “systemic construction,” tragedies like Indore will recur. Seven-star honors may embellish political achievements, but only clean water flowing into every household can truly define a city’s civilization.
Tang Lu
Ms. Tang Lu has served in India, Sri Lanka and Maldives as a journalist for many years.
