Close on the heels of Prime Minister Narendra Modi announcing the ambitious ‘Clean India’ mission, the Union Tourism Ministry on Friday said it was working on a “cleanliness index’’ for cities in the country to encourage the best performers and, in turn, inspire others to spruce up.
“We are preparing a cleanliness index. The methodology has been drafted and index calculated for six cities on a pilot basis. While we will not name the dirtiest cities, we will certainly tell which are the cleanest,” Tourism Secretary Parvez Dewan told reporters at a briefing on work done by the Ministry in the first 100 days of the new government.
In 2013, the government invited proposals from consultants for developing a cleanliness index with appropriate parameters and a scoring method to facilitate ranking of various cities and towns. Meanwhile, outlining the vision for the sector in the next five years, Minister of State for Tourism and Culture Shripad Naik said the aim was to nearly double foreign tourist arrivals in India.
“We will strive to achieve one per cent share of global foreign tourist arrivals in the next five years, which will be about 11.24 million,” Mr. Naik said.
According to official data, India attracted 6.97 million foreign tourists in 2013, 6.58 million in 2012 and 6.31 million in 2011.
