Ambikapur, the district headquarter of Sarguja, located 350 km away from Raipur in Chhattisgarh, was an obscure town until 2017, when it was ranked first, among small towns, in ‘Swachhata Sarvekshan, 2017. With a population of 1.45 lakh housed in 27,247 households, together generating 51 metric tonnes of municipal solid waste per day, Ambikapur, till 2015, had garbage dumps dotting streets; plastic bags flying with the wind; and huge dumpsites generating toxic fumes spreading at the outskirts of the city. Garbage from households was thrown anywhere and everywhere. Municipal vehicles picked up garbage from the streets twice a week, sometimes once in a week and dumped it at a landfill located 15 kms south of town. The municipality spent %6 crore annually on city sanitation but the result hardly showed. Then, there was no grievance redressal system. However, things changed with Swachh Bharat Mission when garbage was identified as a resource. The Ambikapur model is cost-effective, women-Self Help Group (SHG) driven, consumes the entire trash, as well as offers a green solution. Instead of a city-wide approach, Mohalla-approach was adopted, and a Garbage Clinic was built as the nucleus of this arrangement. Over 600 women 16 | INNOVATIONS were enlisted and trained intensively for a week and 450 of them completed the training successfully. With these 450 trained women, 20 SHGs were formed and each Garbage Clinic was assigned to one SHG... Read More