By Sasenarine Singh, Guyana’s Ambassador to the European Union

IN most Indian cities, a politician wakes up, launches a cleanliness “drive” with considerable fanfare, ostentatiously sweeps a street and delivers solemn remarks on civic duty, while the media captures the moment. By the next day, the initiative has concluded, and conditions revert to their prior state.

This is emphatically not the case in Indore, a city that has earned the title of India’s cleanest city for eight consecutive years. Indore’s success stems not from theatrical gestures but from the strategic, sustained work of its administrators.

The Indore Model: Private Sector Leadership and Profit-Driven Waste Management Systems

Indore’s transformation rests on several foundational pillars:

Private-sector involvement at the leadership level in a waste-management and recycling project that financially compensates citizens for recyclable materials—glass bottles, paper boxes, metal cans.

Automation of the entire value chain, with the private sector leading project execution.

A “for-profit” business model for waste management, backed by a competently managed state-administered enforcement arm that ensures the implementation framework is fit for purpose.

The fundamental lesson is clear: waste management will never succeed without guaranteed and predictable funding. The burden of financing must be borne, by and large, by polluters themselves.