"Swachh Survekshan has evolved from a ranking exercise into a capacity-building instrument." Discuss with reference to the Swachh Shehar Jodi initiative.

Swachh Survekshan (SS) is MoHUA's annual urban sanitation survey, which it calls the world's largest. Its 10th edition (2025-26) assessed 4,751 ULBs on 176 sub-indicators [1]. For most of its history it rewarded cities for their own scores. The Swachh Shehar Jodi (SSJ) now also rewards cities for raising other cities. That marks a real shift, though the shift is not yet complete.

SS as a ranking exercise

• Competitive federalism: cities compete in population, river-front, coastal and Himalayan categories, with 60 awards in 7 categories [1].
• Credible measurement: more than 3,000 assessors, GPS-enabled monitoring and digital evidence checks make the rankings hard to game [1].
• Mission tracking: SS measures progress towards SBM-U 2.0's "Garbage Free" cities by 2026 goal [2].

SSJ: the move towards capacity building

• Peer mentoring: 70 mentor cities support about 191 mentee cities across 33 States/UTs. Each pair has signed an MoU under the principle "Each One – Teach One" [1].
• Shared incentive: a Jodi is ranked on the mentor's and mentee's combined score, so a mentor cannot win alone [1].
• Wider recognition: cities that win under SSJ cannot also win Top 3 Clean Cities, so awards reach more cities [1].
• Horizontal support: help now flows between cities, not only from the Centre down. This is cooperative federalism, and it matches the 2025-26 theme, "Badhayein Haath, Karein Safai Saath" [1].

Limits of the shift

• Uneven coverage: only each mentor's best Jodi counts [1]. More than 100 mentees can therefore be ignored without any cost to the mentor.
• Relative, not absolute: a city can top the rankings while the target is still missed. By January 2026 only about 62% of legacy waste had been processed [3].
• Structural gaps: a CAG audit of Uttar Pradesh found that only 3 of 45 ULBs had an SWM plan. It also found SBM-U plants that were built but did not work [4]. Mentoring cannot fill missing staff or bye-laws, which are basic 74th Amendment functions.

SS now combines competition with cooperation, and SSJ is the first step towards capacity building. To complete the shift, MoHUA could:

• score mentees by how much they improve;
• count all of a mentor's Jodis, not just the best one;
• verify that processing plants actually run;
• link funding to results.

These steps would make SS a lasting tool for SDG 11 and for empowered urban local bodies.