Indore tragedy: The cost of complacency
Indore ranked first as India’s cleanest city continuously for eight years from 2017-18 to 2024-25. The city was preparing to retain the first rank for the ninth consecutive year in 2025-26. Unfortunately, the recent water contamination disaster claiming lives has shattered that ambition. In Bhagirathpura locality of Indore, about 30 people lost their lives and more than 1,400 fell ill after consuming contaminated drinking water supplied by the municipality. Sewage-borne bacteria infiltrated the Narmada pipeline supplying drinking water, causing a severe outbreak of diarrhoea and vomiting.
Failure of a civic structure has damaged the image of Indore as the cleanest city. The tragedy reminds us of the need to relearn from Sir Patrick Geddes’ holistic approach to urban planning and civic governance implemented in Indore in 1917-18. During the 1910s plague repeatedly struck the city, spreading through contaminated water and poor sanitation.
The Maharaja of Indore from the Holkar dynasty spent large resources on a water supply system designed to flush water through the sewers and remove the causes of plague. However, the engineering-centric scheme could not succeed and the epidemic persisted. In 1917 the Maharaja invited Sir Patrick Geddes, a renowned Scottish town planner and environmentalist, to study the problem. After extensive fieldwork for a year he prepared the two-volume “Town Planning and City Development Report of Indore”.
The report examined water supply, drainage systems, public health conditions, spread of disease and poor maintenance of gardens, parks and public spaces. It proposed a holistic vision integrating sanitation, green spaces and social conditions. Geddes initially faced suspicion from residents who feared the maps he prepared would lead to demolition of their houses. Taking this as a challenge he requested the Maharaja to symbolically make him Maharaja for a day.
He organised a large Diwali procession and announced that it would pass through streets where houses had been repaired and cleaned. More than 6,000 cartloads of waste were removed and rats were trapped across the city.
Cleaning, repairing and painting of houses took place across Indore since everyone wanted the procession to pass along their streets. The grand procession took place on Diwali. Through this symbolic event rooted in local traditions Geddes mobilised people to fight plague through cleanliness and civic participation.
A century later Indore’s journey to becoming the cleanest city echoed Geddes’ civic mobilisation. The transformation began on 2 October 2017 when Municipal Commissioner Manish Singh convened a meeting of officials, civil society organisations (CSOs) and citizens.
Suggestions were collected and a five-month strategic plan prepared to secure the top rank in Swachh Survekshan. Waste collection began from households, shops and markets and was transported to the trenching ground. Waste was segregated into wet and dry at the source. Earlier waste had been dumped in open plots across localities, which were later fenced.
About 850 vehicles were deployed for waste collection, carrying nearly 800 tonnes of wet waste and 1,200 tonnes of dry waste daily. Old waste was converted into manure while dry waste was recycled. An energy plant producing about 18,000 kilograms of CNG was established and Indore joined the International Clean Air Catalyst Programme. More than ten CSOs conducted awareness campaigns on waste segregation and cleanliness. Toilets were built for below poverty line households and public toilets were constructed across the city, eliminating open defecation. Roads, drainage networks and sewage lines were repaired and expanded. Twice-daily cleaning was introduced and apps and WhatsApp groups were used for monitoring.
Citizen participation remained central to these efforts and the project gained global recognition, becoming a case study published in Harvard Business Review.
However, the contamination tragedy reveals a gap between Indore’s management-driven cleanliness campaign and Geddes’ principle of diagnosing problems before implementing solutions. The disaster reflects systemic lapses including complacency, weak supervision and declining civic vigilance.
Retaining the top rank will now be far more difficult. Municipal officials, political representatives, ward corporators, citizens and CSOs must work together to restore Indore’s image. The inclusive approach advocated by Sir Patrick Geddes in 1918 must guide the city again.
Sir Patrick Geddes is regarded as a pioneer of sociology in India along with Professor GS Ghurye. After leaving Indore he established the first Department of Sociology at the University of Bombay in 1919. In 2019 an international conference on Clean India was organised in Indore where Marion Geddes, granddaughter of Sir Patrick Geddes, was invited and honoured.
The writer is an International Social Development Expert and former Professor of Social Economics, Public Policy, and Entrepreneurship; views are personal
