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Kerala's Student Green Brigade Scholarship - EcoSense pays school students for hands-on waste-management work under Swachh Bharat Mission-Urban 2.0.
Against a target of 50,000 scholarships, 45,880 students across 986 Local Self Government Institutions are receiving Rs 1,500 and a certificate each this year.
Selection is quota-based: 50 students per Grama Panchayat, 75 per Municipality and 100 per Corporation, drawn from Classes 6-9 and first-year Higher Secondary and Vocational Higher Secondary.
Around 5 lakh students from nearly 9,000 schools took part, visiting Material Collection Facilities and Resource Recovery Facilities and holding Green Assemblies (Haritha Sabhas).
Make all cities Garbage Free, ensure grey and black water management in cities not covered by AMRUT, and take all urban local bodies to ODF+ status, with towns under one lakh population reaching ODF++.
Key: Launched 1 October 2021 alongside AMRUT 2.0; outlay about Rs 1.41 lakh crore for 2021-22 to 2025-26; nodal ministry MoHUA. It emphasises source segregation, the 3Rs, scientific processing of municipal solid waste and remediation of legacy dumpsites.
Rank cities on cleanliness every year and create competitive pressure among urban local bodies.
Key: Started in 2016 under SBM-Urban by MoHUA; now the world's largest urban sanitation survey, with over 4,500 cities. In the ninth edition (2024-25) Ahmedabad was named cleanest big city, while long-time topper Indore moved into the new Swachh Bharat Super League.
Provide a single verifiable metric of a city's solid waste management performance on the way to Garbage Free status.
Key: Launched by MoHUA in 2018. Cities may self-declare 1-, 2- and 4-star ratings, while 3-, 5- and 7-star certification needs independent third-party verification arranged by MoHUA; the rating weighs heavily in Swachh Survekshan.
Collect non-biodegradable waste door to door for a user fee and support biodegradable waste management at the local body level in Kerala.
Key: A women-led green task force drawn from Kudumbashree, organised as micro-enterprises in each local body, working with the Suchitwa Mission and Clean Kerala Company; roughly 4,485 groups across about 1,034 Local Self Government Institutions.
Kerala's poverty eradication and women empowerment mission, a three-tier network of women's neighbourhood groups. Launched as the State Poverty Eradication Mission in 1998 and operational as Kudumbashree from 1999; it staffs the Haritha Karma Sena.
Technical support agency for sanitation and waste management under Kerala's Local Self Government Department, working with local bodies on segregation, collection and processing.
Notified by the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change on 8 April 2016, replacing the Municipal Solid Wastes (Management and Handling) Rules, 2000. Waste generators must segregate at source into three streams - biodegradable, dry recyclable and domestic hazardous - and local bodies may levy a user fee. Coverage extends beyond municipal areas to urban agglomerations, census towns, notified industrial townships, railway and airport land, SEZs and pilgrimage places. This is the duty EcoSense trains students to practise.
GS Paper 2 > Governance > Government Policies and Interventions for Development
General Awareness > Government Schemes and State Initiatives
As per the Solid Waste Management Rules, 2016 in India, which one of the following statements is correct?
Answer: The Rules provide for exact and elaborate criteria for the identification of sites for landfills and waste processing facilities.
SBM-Urban grades: ODF+ needs functional, maintained community and public toilets; ODF++ adds safe treatment of faecal sludge and septage.
Local nodes where segregated dry waste is aggregated and sorted before recycling.
Kerala's Kudumbashree-based women's force collecting non-biodegradable waste door to door for a user fee.