Women's Feature Service

In 1995, S.R. Rao came as Municipal Commissioner to a traumatised, plague-hit city - Surat. He pulled the somnolent and corrupt bureaucracy up by its socks, demolished illegal buildings, put sustainable systems in place and established a healthy interface between citizens and the civic authorities. From being one of India's dirtiest cities, Surat rose, Phoenix-like, to be one of its cleanest.

Rao moved to another posting within two years. But this industrial centre with a large migrant labour population continues to follow the systems he put into place. Surat is now arguably the most liveable city in Gujarat, with swanky flyovers, broad roads, washed streets and spotless pavements.

SURAT (INDIA) - Surat has always had a place in India's history by virtue of being the country's most important port on the west coast until the 17th century; the East India Company established its first trading post here. But in 1994, this industrial city in Gujarat shot into international prominence for all the wrong reasons. It was here that the plague - an epidemic believed to have been wiped from the face of the earth - surfaced.

Various reasons have been given for the outbreak, with most people pointing a finger at the sorry state of civic facilities.

According to a study of the World Health Organisation (WHO), the immediate cause of the plague in 1994 was constant rain which lashed this industrial town for two months. The faulty drainage system could not handle this and the result was large-scale water logging. Hundreds of cattle and other animals died because of the floods and the municipal authorities were not prompt enough in cleaning the city, which led to massive sanitation problems. Estimates put the number of dead at 54 with a total of 146 presumptive cases of plague.

The northern part of the city - which was affected the most by the plague and from where the largest number of deaths were reported - did not have access to any type of sewage system. Despite being one of the richest civic bodies in the country, the Surat Municipal Corporation (SMC) had failed to provide basic sanitation and cleandrinking water to a majority of the city's population.

However, it was not the civic authorities alone who were to blame for this state of affairs. At that time, anything that had to do even remotely with public health and sanitation was rejected outright by Surat's citizens. People freely threw their garbage on the streets and did not clean the filthy containers for months on end even as animal carcasses rotted on street corners. Puddles of dirty water, choking gutters, leaking drainage pipes, drinking water mixed with sewerage and mosquitoes and flies everywhere completed the picture.

With half the city not having piped water supply and over 70 per cent without any sewage system, Surat had become host to diseases like malaria, jaundice and dengue fever. Even before the plague struck the city, these diseases had already assumed endemic proportions. Hundreds died of malaria and dengue fever in the city every year, but nobody seemed to notice.

The plague focussed international attention on this city, which had attracted both skilled and unskilled labour from all over the country to work in its textile and diamond polishing industries. Sadly, this attention was all negative. The plague created panic, with 60 per cent of the city's population fleeing. The exodus, primarily of migrant labour, not only dealt a severe blow to the state's economy but also to the national economy. India's international image also suffered a major blow with some foreign airlines suspending their flights to the country. Some other countries also banned the import of Indian food grains and quarantined passengers travelling from India.

But then things changed dramatically. Surat, which had witnessed a health holocaust, rose Phoenix-like to become one of the cleanest cities in India. And all it required was one man's efforts to shake Surat's estimated two million people (with an additional floating population of 500,000) into action mode.

On a fateful day in May 1995, Suryadevra Ramachandra Rao, the Municipal Commissioner of Surat, walked into the city dressed in simple blue denim trousers and canvas shoes. He took out some tobacco from his front pocket, rolled it into a cigarette and said in the best tradition of an American Western, "I am S.R. Rao."

The irony of Rao's coming to Surat was that he had not wanted to be there in the first place. "I had started framing strategies to get out of this place as fast as possible," the thin, frail-looking Rao often said later.

Faced with a city traumatised by the plague and a state government cringing over the adverse publicity, Rao started raiding eateries, roadside haunts, fast-food shops, restaurants and sweetmeat shops to demonstrate to the city the unhygienic it was eating. When he trampled on mounds of food with cockroaches and rats swarming over them, Rao caught the imagination of the people. The raids hit suppliers and manufacturers and all popular restaurants in the city were sealed till they cleaned up.

Rao also walked into the filthiest slums, encouraged people to clean up their surroundings, told the civic sweepers what to do and got officials into the act. This act too hit the mark since an estimated 40 per cent of the city's population lived in slums, 80 per cent of them migrants. These slums were located on encroached municipal or private land, along major transport corridors, and near factory premises on low lying areas without proper drainage.

Undeterred by opposition from powerful vested interests, Rao also decided to take on the politically influential builders lobby, with its huge disposable incomes. Illegal constructions had sprouted in virtually every nook and cranny of Surat, giving a go-by to all building norms and by-laws. Municipal officials had also become a part of the big racket.

One day Rao got a frantic call from his deputy commissioner telling him that a local Member of the Gujarat Legislative Assembly (MLA), was brandishing his licensed revolver while his henchmen were threatening the civic team which was demolishing some illegal constructions.

Rao rushed to the spot and ordered the MLA to come out and meet him. In front of hundreds of onlookers, the politician came out flaunting his revolver and fired it in the air. Rao kept silent and gave the MLA a resounding slap on his face. He then ordered his men to continue with the demolition while the police arrested the MLA.

Even though he was under pressure from some political leaders as well as industrial houses which were accustomed to the SMC's indifferent attitude towards environmental offences like indiscriminate waste disposal, Rao started what was later called Operation Demolition.

No area and no person who was in the wrong were spared.

But ensuring discipline, both among municipal staff in performing their duties and the public at large, by strictly adhering to the garbage disposal instructions issued by the SMC and charging administrative costs for removing garbage thrown indiscriminately created disenchantment among almost all the sections of the population.

But the citizens soon realised that Rao meant business. So, after the initial hiccups a healthy relationship between citizens and the civic authorities was established. So much so that the SMC officials would draw up a line on the streets and mark the illegally-constructed houses and the residents would demolish all of them. As a result of this drive, narrow lanes which could barely accommodate two-wheelers earlier became wide enough to allow buses and cars to move freely.

Cleanliness became the order of the day. Garbage bins were kept all over the city and regularly cleaned by the SMC's Health Department.

Innovation was the key in achieving so much success. A unique night cleansing system was developed: Every street and corner was scrubbed at night and garbage bins cleared so that Suratis awoke to a clean city each morning. Within one year, through well orchestrated methods, administrative, legal, punitive and community motivation, the SMC increased the cleaning of accumulated garbage from 450 tonnes (50 per cent of the amount generated at the time of the plague) to almost 94 per cent of the 1,100 tonnes of garbage generated every day in 1995.

This system worked so well that it attracted researchers and urban managers to examine the reasons for its success. And not without reason. Because the filthiest city in the country had metamorphosed into the second cleanest city after Chandigarh. And once again Surat played host to hundreds of people, including teams from other Municipal Corporations, non-governmental organisations, doctors and researchers. Except that this time they had come to study the story of Surat's regeneration and not its collapse.

"The most important thing Rao did was to put a system in place. He made the civic staff realise the powers they enjoyed and how a proper use of these powers would earn them respect. Later, it became a matter of prestige for the civic staff to continue the work that was started after the plague," says Ashwin Mehta, currently Surat's Deputy Municipal Commissioner.

Though Rao moved out of Surat at the end of 1997 - two years after he had entered the city - it continues to be clean and has arguably become the most liveable city in Gujarat. Swanky flyovers, broad clean roads, washed streets and spotless footpaths are now a part of this industrial city. Says Mahendra Kajiwala, the former president of the Southern Gujarat Chamber of Commerce and Industry, "Whoever replaced Rao had to perforce stick to the rules." Adds Sharad Kantawala, former Municipal Councillor of Surat, "Everyone follows the system."

For his services in the rebuilding of post-plague Surat, Rao was awarded the Public Service Excellence award instituted and administered by the All India Management Association to recognise, applaud and uphold the bureaucracy's commitment to public service.

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