₹1000-cr clean hill cities drive to bank on decentralised, resilient technologies

A₹1,000 crore initiative for strip j. J. Hill cities below Swachh Bharat missionary station (SBM) 2.0 testament be rolled out in January, Srinivas K, secretary at union ministry of housing and urban Affairs (MoHUA), said on Tuesday.He was speaking as part of a preparatory workshop for this scheme in the national capital attended by officials of 12 Himalayan and northeastern states and that of five hill cities from West Bengal.Roopa Mishra, joint secretary at MoHUA, said states have been asked to develop their own templates under the mission, tailored to local geography, climate and capacity constraints.“These templates must be scalable, implementable and replicable within their regions,” she said.Senior officials said the programme marks a shift away from applying urban management models designed for the plains to hill cities.Officials acknowledged that earlier interventions often relied on centralised and capital-intensive technologies that proved unsuitable for high-altitude towns. In several cases, solid waste management facilities and treatment plants commissioned in hill cities became non-functional due to poor accessibility, lack of locally trained manpower, and the inability of technologies to operate in sub-zero conditions.Also Read:80% of central funds for Urban Swachh Bharat Mission unused by states, UTs: GovtStates are expected to begin placing their proposals by the end of January, as part of this new framework under SBM 2.0 aimed at overhauling waste and water management systems in these regions. The initiative will be supported by additional funding and seeks to address long-standing implementation gaps in difficult terrain and extreme climatic conditions.HT last week reported how SBM 2 funds remain largely untapped with states only utlising 20% of the entire earmarked central funding with only one year of the mission’s original term remaining.The new framework seeks to institutionalise decentralisation and appropriate technology drawing from successful pilots discussed during the workshop. The focus will be on small, decentralised systems that can be operated, repaired and managed locally. Officials said such systems have shown greater resilience in high-altitude and remote settings compared to large “mega” facilities.Another key challenge highlighted during the workshop was the surge in waste generation during peak tourist seasons. Modern packaging waste, officials noted, places disproportionate pressure on fragile mountain ecosystems that have limited recycling and processing capacity. States have also been encouraged to document and share successful local models to enable peer learning across regions.