The Single Equality Scheme Report Of Public Engagement May: Fill & Download for Free

Significantly mixed.The overall impacts of charter schools are in some ways quite positive, and in some ways extremely negative.Separating Good Schools from Bad SchoolsIt’s important to first note that a charter school is not the same as a private school. Charter schools are public schools; they cannot charge tuition, are subject to church-state issues that parochial or private schools are not, cannot require entrance exams, and must participate in required state testing where private schools do not.However, there is incredible variability to how charter schools are organized, run, held accountable, funded, accept students, create and use curriculum, and more.I have a friend who works for Etude High School, a public charter school in Wisconsin. It’s a great learning environment that very much differs from the rigid sit-and-learn methods of traditional schools. It’s a project-based learning, discovery-focused model that allows a lot of work-at-your-own-pace education and challenges students to apply cross-disciplinary skills in every aspect of their education. It’s doing some incredibly innovative education, and it’s been quite successful. My friend has been there for six years and loves it. His students have gone on to be quite successful.Other charter schools fail spectacularly. A recent study found that many online-based charter schools fail to graduate even half of their students. Numerous charter schools have closed mid-year and without warning, leaving students, parents, and even teachers stranded in the middle of a school year with limited options.What divides the two?Largely accountability, organization, and effective resourcing.Some charter schools are “schools within a school,” or otherwise organized under the main public district, and overseen by the district’s publicly elected school board.These can vary from entirely separate “alternative schools” that follow specialized or experimental educational structures, such as Etude, to specific, isolated programs that operate in the same buildings as the regular schools.For example, a nearby city to where I grew up operates an alternative school for students who might otherwise drop out due to teen pregnancy, disciplinary issues, work schedules, and more. The dedicated building is open longer hours (7am to 7pm,) with teachers that operate more on shifts than a traditional school. The school has built-in child care for single teen parents. It is focused on a traditional high school diploma and not just a GED. It doesn’t generally offer extracurricular activities, though students can enroll in those with the main school. (Most don’t.)In contrast, a friend of mine from college who taught English for a number of years was tapped to run an isolated, dedicated program within her school that she created from the ground up for at-risk students who just couldn’t operate in a traditional educational framework. She was essentially her own principal, though she officially reported to the principal of the high school on the organization chart. (She’s been incredibly successful and recently was a presenter at a multi-state regional conference on educational innovation.) This program co-ordinates with traditional classes, replacing most entirely, but still operates within the same school.Both of these charter schools are funded by need. They receive state aid per pupil like public schools, but they also receive grants for specific programs and specific activities. Etude works with a number of local manufacturers who sponsor various projects, extracurricular activities, and courses that work in conjunction with their businesses where students learn to apply their school work to real-world applications.Both of these are accountable to the local public school board. Their books are public record and overseen by the district administration.Other charter schools are privately owned, for-profit organizations, and operate on a contract with local districts. These receive public funding, but are not directly overseen by the public school board. These schools receive grants, local, state, and federal, ranging from the standard state aid per pupil to specific grants for technology, curriculum, or personnel, to undedicated blocks of straight cash to be used as the school sees fit.Some of these are successful. There are numerous privately-run for-profit Montessori schools that operate on contracts with districts to ensure that program graduates can easily transfer right into the public school’s curriculum, and many of these are very successful.Others are essentially nothing more than get-rich-quick schemes or other criminal enterprises by organizers, just as they are in higher education. The fact that they operate on contracts with sometimes little or even no oversight from the public also opens them up to incredible waste, fraud, and abuse. Over a six-year period spanning both the Bush and Obama administrations, the Federal government alone investigated 53 charter schools that resulted in 21 indictments and 17 convictions.Steven Cox, a former insurance executive and the founder of the now-defunct California Charter Academy, at one point the largest chain of charter schools in the country, was indicted on 56 counts of misappropriation and theft for trips to Disneyland and stealing $42,000 from the school to pay his personal income taxes. Eleven years later, Cox’s case still has not been resolved as he continues to use his fortune to litigate it. Horizon Academy in Cincinnati essentially operated as a front for an immigration fraud ring for several years as the founder used it to get work visas for Turkish nationals with absolutely no background in education. The CEO of Philadelphia Academy Charter School admitted to stealing approximately a half a million dollars from the school in part through raiding its vending machines.These schools operate on loose contracts with little to no accountability to the public other than being required to publish graduation rates and test scores. They can often operate for years bilking the public before closing, sometimes abruptly, and absconding with the funds.Positive Charter School Models and OpportunitiesWhere schools are effectively resourced based on demonstrated need, and are publicly accountable just as the traditional public school, charter schools may be quite effective. They can be testbeds for new educational practices and reforms, or offer alternatives for students who need different educational models from their peers.Charter schools might be a great way to differentiate education or provide specialized educational applications, such as in-depth vocational education. Imagine if a student graduated high school ready or significantly far along the track to becoming a journeyman carpenter or a licensed electrician. While requiring specialization through tracked education may not be practical or even desirable (look at me, I was going to be an astrophysicist when I started undergraduate,) offering the opportunities might be quite beneficial.Offering this kind of differentiated education is already a goal of most public schools. However, a charter school with a specific mission, as opposed to the more general liberal arts education of a traditional K-12 school, could provide a more focused differentiated education that goes in-depth on a particular area, rather than more broadly on several disciplines.There are positives and negatives to this. A more well-rounded education has proven itself over time to benefit a person over their whole life. I had a poster up on my wall when I taught that had a picture of scientists running away from dinosaurs that read, “Science will teach you how to clone a T-Rex. Humanities will teach you why it’s a bad idea.”Now, a charter school could have a liberal arts education that is still focused on a certain topic. A charter school focused on churning out STEM educated graduates, for example, may have just as much focus on literature and art and music, but from an engineering perspective. The band students might take more time to learn acoustical physics or metallurgy for better instruments. The literature may focus slightly more heavily on technical documents and scientific literacy, but also include fiction geared towards engineering types. The math might be more practical-application-based.The Perception of Failing Public Schools and The Rise of ConsumerismJon Stewart hosted educational reformer Diane Ravitch several times on his show. Ravitch noted on multiple occasions that the majority of U.S. adults have bought into the narrative that public schools are failing. International benchmark test scores continue to fall for U.S. students, for example. Advocacy documentaries such as Waiting for Superman paint the public schools as a broken system where teachers’ unions continue to drive a status-quo at the expense of children, and charter schools as the revolution in education that would shake up the industry with competition and reform that public schools lack, but limited by lottery systems leaving the unlucky trapped.Yet, Ravitch also noted that on the whole, most U.S. voters surveyed also believe that their local public school is good and successful.Jon Stewart: These areas, so the families in these areas, because this gets into another issue you bring up in the book [Reign of Error]. The families in this area are rightly concerned with the performance of some of the public schools in their area. These schools can be dilapidated, they can be poorly performing and these types of things. There is this movement and the charter movement that says ‘what’s wrong with giving choice to those kids in those areas?’ because the schools around them are not are not serving their needs. What is wrong with that in your mind?Diane Ravitch: Well, what’s wrong with it is that there, it is part of, I believe, a purposeful effort to create a consumer mentality around education. Public education is the public responsibility. Whether you send your children to private schools, or to a religious school, or you home school them, that’s your right. And if you have no children at all, you’re still obligated to support public education. What they’re trying to do is to say that public education is not public, it’s a choice, it’s a consumer choice. They’re trying to destroy the sense of civic obligation so the next time there’s a…JS: So, turn it into a marketplace?DR: Yes, a marketplace, exactly. So, the next time a bond issue is up, you will say ‘well, I don’t have a child in school. I’m not going to vote for the bond issue.’ We’re going to destroy public education that way. . . . I think it’s all wrong. I think that the idea of you look on your school, you go shopping and you pick your school the way you pick your shoes or your automobile, that is wrong too. People should have a good neighborhood school in every neighborhood. One where they are very happy to send their kids because they know the teachers are terrific. The funny thing is if you look at poll data from Gallup, what it shows is if people are asked how is American education doing, they’ve heard thirty years of American education is broken, it doesn’t work, it’s obsolete, so they say ‘oh, American public education, no good.’ How is your school, how is your neighborhood school? ‘Oh, my neighborhood school is terrific. My teachers are great. I love my teachers.’JS: But it is like Congress, you could look at that, too, the same way. Oh, my Congressman is okay, but the institution – it does have issues… [laughter].The increasing narrative of “school choice” around charter schools continues to create a false premise of the consumer mentality towards education; we pay for the educational system, and so we ought to get what we pay for. And if we don’t like the results, we ought to buy something else.Yet, public schools are not allowed in many cases to compete on the same level playing field as private schools or even charter schools.Public schools are reliant on taxes, and obviously, few people really like paying more in taxes. They see their property tax levies as directly funding the schools. They often don’t think about those taxes also funding police, fire, and EMS services. So, when the municipality suggests raising taxes again, adding another bonding bill to the budget, passing another referendum, it gets voted down, often by those who no longer have children in the district.This happens because we’ve bought into this business-consumerism model of education rather than funding it as a public trust for everyone. It used to be that we all understood it was a public trust; even if you didn’t have kids in the school, it was important to fund it for everyone because it makes the public better off.As John Green notes:Public education does not exist for the benefit of students or the benefit of their parents. It exists for the benefit of the social order.We have discovered as a species that it is useful to have an educated population. You do not need to be a student or have a child who is a student to benefit from public education. Every second of every day of your life, you benefit from public education.So let me explain why I like to pay taxes for schools, even though I don't personally have a kid in school: It's because I don't like living in a country with a bunch of stupid people.Consumerism takes the approach that whatever is good for the individual is good for society. This is the absolute worst approach to something like education, and really even good governance or society.Civic Responsibility and Pride, and How That Impacts Government - Including Public EducationEducation is one of the great equalizers of humanity, and it was for that precise reason that the United States was one of the earliest innovators in providing a free, public education to every citizen, even mandating compulsory attendance. We were one of the first countries to achieve a >90% literacy rate.We did so because of the idea of civic responsibility for one another: that if we all contribute to the public good, we all receive back something greater than we put in.Education lifts millions out of poverty by creating a skilled workforce. That skilled workforce put a car in every driveway, a computer in everyone’s pocket, and a man on the Moon. The space program alone yielded innovations that dominate our daily lives ranging from memory foam to LASIK to infrared ear thermometers. It would not have been possible without a broad, skilled workforce, the product of public education.Whether it’s vocational education, professional education, or even general education, public education creates opportunities for every single person in the country to contribute to society. It was that kind of public access to education that turned the United States from a backwater rural agrarian society to the largest, most prosperous industrialized superpower in the world.And we took pride in that. We created state university systems that we wanted to become the envy of the world, publicly available to every citizen. We would produce the finest scientists and inventors and the world’s greatest artists. We would take pride in fostering the world’s greatest economy and the world’s greatest culture.We did that by investing in our people. Collectively. Public institutions would be cathedrals of civic pride. Public buildings such as schools and courthouses were marble and granite, built to last. They were also the centers of civic activity. The school was often the heart of the town, where meetings and debates and festivals and elections were held. The courthouse would be where critical matters of government would be decided and administered. These were buildings of respect, and everyone took pride in that. We built that.We don’t teach that kind of civic mentality anymore, not in our homes and not in our schools. Hell, we can’t even teach that in our schools anymore, because teachers would get fired for politicizing in the classroom.The school is not the center of civic life, because honestly, we no longer have a civic life.Consumerism has replaced that sense of civic responsibility to each other to make the nation better overall. Ayn Rand’s idea of selfishness as a virtue has become the guidestar of the nation: screw you, so long as I got mine.We no longer care about investing in society, trusting that we would reap the benefits. Instead, we only care about consuming from society; if we are not personally benefiting, then it must not be valuable.This is why, I firmly believe, it is so easy for certain people to believe in the idea of a “moocher class” of “welfare queens” who just exist to live fat off the public trough: it’s what they would do if they were allowed to. Why? Because they live from a mentality of consumerism, and not civic engagement.If we start from the premise that public schools are a public trust which we are all responsible for, the whole conversation changes. No longer is it about requiring education to fix itself by forcing it to compete over increasingly limited resources. Instead, it’s a matter of coming together as a culture to improve education. Every stakeholder has some degree of obligation, then.Some of it might be more funding. Maybe people without kids decide to invest their time in coaching. Maybe businesses do more joint ventures with the schools.Most of it is just shifting from an external locus of control to an internal locus of control.And that’s eminently evident in the overall impact of charter schools. The impact of charter schools is that they continue to further the mentality that other people are responsible for making a product that we want to buy and we’ll just keep demanding alternatives until we get what we want, rather than civic ownership of that product and collective work to improve it. If others are responsible for the quality control, then we as a society don’t have to have any responsibility for the outcomes.But if we are responsible for improving that product, that has a whole host of rather difficult implications for us. That’s going to require work.Look. If you want a better country, you have to be better citizens.That starts with understanding that in a government of the people, for the people, and by the people, the people are what make the difference. All of the people. Everyone is responsible for the public good. Everyone has to contribute and work at it.Charter schools are a cheap cop-out to avoid that responsibility. They continue to further an external locus of control that takes away the need for self-agency to work to improve the situation. Someone else can clean it up.Oh, we’ll pay for it. Grudgingly.So long as we don’t actually have to do anything.In BriefCharter schools do provide some valuable alternatives to traditional models of education, and testbeds for educational research. They can be excellent ways to differentiate student learning and provide unique opportunities for some students.They can also be incredibly detrimental to student outcomes and perpetuate a flagging sense of civic responsibility and a consumerist society that abdicates personal responsibility and self-agency for “more choices” and personal satisfaction.It’s difficult to say which of these impacts has the greater weight. Every situation in every place charter schools are implemented is different.Caveat emptor.Your mileage may vary.This is long and I didn’t add any pictures. Here. Have a baby raccoon.Mostly Standard Addendum and Disclaimer: read this before you comment.I welcome rational, reasoned debate on the merits with reliable, credible sources.But coming on here and calling me names, pissing and moaning about how biased I am, et cetera and BNBR violation and so forth, will result in a swift one-way frogmarch out the airlock. Doing the same to others will result in the same treatment.Essentially, act like an adult and don’t be a dick about it.Getting cute with me about my commenting rules and how my answer doesn’t follow my rules and blah, blah, whine, blah is getting old. Stay on topic or you’ll get to watch the debate from the outside.If you want to argue and you’re not sure how to not be a dick about it, just post a picture of a cute baby animal instead, all right? Your displeasure and disagreement will be duly noted. Pinkie swear.If you have to consider whether or not you’re over the line, the answer is most likely yes. I’ll just delete your comment and probably block you, and frankly, I won’t lose a minute of sleep over it.Debate responsibly.Thanks for the A2A, Habib.

How about the woman who gained the sympathy and attention of the world by pretending to be a victim of the most devastating terrorist attack in history?Meet the 9/11 FakerWe all know what happened on that morning of September 11, 2001. A senseless tragedy that claimed the lives of thousands of people and affected millions more, and I’m not talking about Mariah Carey’s infamous Glitter (another tragedy that occurred on 9/11/01). Jokes aside, the relative peace and prosperity of the 1990s came to a crashing end with the fall of the twin towers and what followed was a decade of paranoia and war, but I digress.It is estimated that more than half of Americans experienced symptoms of PTSD in the days following the attack.In the days following the attack, as the list of casualties grew larger and larger and more and more people were reported missing, a wave of panic wracked almost every family in the land and New York practically shut down for a full week, even allowing a woman’s possible murder to go unsolved (Disappearance of Sneha Anne Philip). In typical early 2000s fashion, the internet became the go-to place for survivors and family to connect and rather heartwarmingly, forums popped up all over the infant web for survivors to connect and console one another after surviving such a life-changing tragic event. The nation had started the healing process, though it still had a long way to go.Stories began to emerge that would become legend. Stories such as fearless fire fighters who ran through the rubble, putting their lives at risk. But the most famous was of the young man with the red bandana who ran through smoke and burning rooms to rescue unconscious survivors. A great many survivors reported to be saved by this man, later identified as Welles Crowther, who actually died that day, giving his own life to help others. I truly believe that life-or-death situations such as 9/11 bring out people’s rawest morality. Some will value only their own survival and act accordingly, while others will disregard all safety to help those around them. Or, of course, one can simply capitalise on the situation and pretend to be a victim when they were never there at all.Wells Crowther- the man in the red bandana. He was only 24. (1977–2001)The largest online forum was the World Trade Center Survivors’ Network. In 2004, a woman reached out to them with an extraordinary story. She claimed that her name was Tania Head, and that she had almost died during the attack but had miraculously survived. She described crawling through smoke and flames on the 78th floor of the South Tower when the plane hit, making her one of only 19 people at or above the point of impact to have survived. If that wasn’t traumatic enough for the poor woman, she claimed that her beloved fiancé Dave, who had worked in the North Tower, had been killed, mere weeks before their wedding day. She also asserted that a dying man in the South Tower, in his last breath, passed to her his wedding ring so she could return it to his wife. Finally, Tania claimed that she had been saved, rescued from death when she was almost unconscious, by none other than Wells Crowther, the hero in the red bandana.The policy of the Survivors’ Network was, of course, that everyone’s story was equal, but Head’s story was literally perfect, in a morbid way. Not only had she nearly lost her own life, she had lost the love of her life, she had fulfilled the dying wish of a stranger and she had been saved by the mythical red bandana man. She was instantly seen as a tragic hero, a true survivor and a selfless, resilient woman. Other than that, she had a kind, likeable personality and there was a part of her story that almost everyone affected by the tragedy could relate to, either from losing a loved one or from surviving the attack on the towers. It wasn't long before Tania was chosen to be the President of the Survivors’ Network and made many public appearances where she consistently retold her story and gained the respect and solidarity of millions.From around 2005 to 2007, this woman was literally everywhere. She was interviewed on every channel and every show, invited to speak at university conferences and her presence was requested at every memorial or commemoration. Probably her most famous appearance was in 2005, when she was chosen to lead tours for the Tribute WTC Visitor Center. She was shown on every front page headline in the country leading Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Former Mayor Rudy Giuliani and Governor George Pataki through the museum.Tania regularly recounted her claims to Ground Zero tour groups in vivid detail, always starting the tour by saying “I was there at the towers. I'm a survivor. I'm going to tell you about that." As president of the Survivors’ Network, she truly was chosen as the face of 20,000 survivors. No one doubted her for a second. Richard Zimbler, her successor as president of the World Trade Center Survivors' Network, said, "There was no reason to doubt her story. She looked the part. She had a badly injured arm that appeared to have burn scars and her story was very, very realistic."Well, she may have looked the part, had an injured arm and had a realistic story, but something just didn't add up. As her story became reported countless times, cracks started to appear. The surprising truth was, of course, that absolutely nothing she claimed was ever proven or backed up. No one would dare question the survivor of such a tragic event about their story. Everyone simply took her for her word, and this alone allowed her to get to where she did. When an investigation did occur, however, the game was up for her.In September of 2007, The New York Times decided to do an in-depth of Tania Head's story as part of an anniversary piece. In the process of researching for this article, every lie was exposed. Tania had claimed to be a graduate of Harvard University and a business graduate of Stanford University, but those institutions had no record of her. She had claimed to have worked for Merrill Lynch in the World Trade Center, but Merrill Lynch had no record of her employment, nor did they even have offices in the World Trade Center at the time of the attacks. This didn’t look good at all, and Tania backed out of three scheduled interviews and later refused to speak to reporters at all. The New York Times then contacted other members of the Survivors’ Network and raised questions about the validity of their acting president’s story. By September 27, the Survivors’ Network had removed her as president and director of the group.Tania had maintained that she had been engaged to a man, David, nicknamed "Big Dave", who had perished in the opposite tower. However, the man's (he was a real person) family claimed to have never heard of her. Furthermore, it was revealed that Tania had been inconsistent in her story about Dave, sometimes referring to him as her husband instead of fiancé.With every single lie exposed, the only thing left was to find out who Tania Head really was. Her true identity was eventually revealed by a Barcelona newspaper, La Vanguardia, which reported that “Tania Head” was in fact a Spanish-born woman by the name of Alicia Esteve Head who had been enrolled in the ESADE Business School in Barcelona during the September 11 attacks, where she had told her classmates that her scarred arm was the result of an automobile accident, or alternatively a horse riding accident, many years earlier (it is a common trait among pathological liars to “slip up” with their stories, just as she had done with the state of “marriage” to Dave). La Vanguardia reported that Head attended classes in the program until June 2002 and had told classmates she wanted to work in New York. She was not even on the same continent during the attacks and had not even set foot in the US until 2003. Obviously, she was a total fraud.Head proceeded to disappear completely. An email from a Spanish account was sent to the Survivors’ Network that claimed Head had committed suicide, but she was spotted on the rare occasion in and out of New York City all the way up to 2011, adamantly refusing to talk to anyone. To this day, she has refused to comment or be interviewed since her deception was revealed to the public. It was reported that she was working for an insurance company in Barcelona in 2012 when her identity was revealed and she was fired.What still astounds me is her motive in the deception. It would be easy to think that financial gain would be what drove her to commit this deception, but that couldn’t be the case. She did not receive any compensation from the Survivors’ Network and even donated money to the organisation. No, what drove Alicia Esteve Head to show up in New York City with a fake name and fake story was pure attention and fame. She carefully studied reports of what happened on 9/11 and crafted the perfect survival narrative, even going as far as naming a random dead man as her fiancé (or husband, depending on her mood when telling the story). Some people will go to ridiculous lengths to get fame and attention, and maybe pretending to be a 9/11 survivor was the only way that Alicia Esteve Head could think of. Ironically, her scheme was largely unsuccessful in the end as she is relatively forgotten today. I hope, however, that my piece will draw some deserved infamy and notoriety to this master manipulator and con artist.While it is true that she did not make off with charity money or anything like that, she broke the trust and hopes of thousands of survivors who felt enough faith and solidarity with her to elect her as their president of the Survivors’ Network and gave her the opportunity to lead tours and make appearances in the name of their network. Even if, arguably, she did more good than harm to the network during her time as its leader, she had no right to be in that position and her fame was based on a lie. She stole the opportunity from someone who genuinely survived the attack and who the role would actually have some meaning to.I don’t know whether to loathe or pity someone who would go to such lengths just for some attention. She definitely shows signs of being a sociopath or having some other personality disorder, and she is almost certainly a pathological liar. Regardless, it’s still a damn interesting story ten years later!

I would say, its primarily because of this reasonThe rules of Swach Sarvesh are not suitable for Kerala in many ways. Its like asking a Fish to climb the tree to prove its skill comparable to a monkey.One big problem which many of our officials in Government has, is by considering India as one single country, much like Japan or Malaysia or Iran etc. Yes, India is one country only in terms of political level, ie we have a single country called REPUBLIC OF INDIA and its citizens as Indians. But in any other ways, India is just union of multiple states, cultures, thought process, identities, attitudes, concepts etc which can’t be classified as one. Just like there is one forest, but all creatures inside the forest aren’t same, same way One India has multiple Indias and Indians inside it, who can’t be measured in same way.The basic concept of many of these Central Sponsored Programs runs as TOP-TO-BOTTOM approach, ie Govt decides how process should and it trickles down ultimately to the people. Its a very much centralized approach.Kerala Suchitwa Mission Director and technical panel explains how Kerala works on decentralization model.On other hand, Kerala is heavily decentralized society as such. The basic policy of decentralization with concept of JANAKIYASSOTRAM (people’s planning) runs so strong in Kerala, where its primarily BOTTOM-TO-TOP approach, ie local people’s councils/panchayats decides on programs and then taken upwards upto Government level.Lets take some look into rules of Swach Sarveshan Mission (SSM) and how its irrelevant to Keralahttps://swachhsurvekshan2018.org/Images/Swachh%20Survekshan%202018%20Toolkit%20-%20English.pdfThe key approaches of SSM are Centralized waste collection techniques, transport of such, large scale landfill or central waste processing plants etc.These are highly common in many states of India, almost impossible in Kerala.Differences in concept of waste collectionWaste management in Kerala cities are normally done by State’s Women Empowerment Mission (Self Help Groups-SHGs)- Kudumbashree, who forms its own independent societies are city levels (some cities have multiple societies). There is no centralized waste collection method policy for a state as such as its done by each Local Government in its own discretion. Now Kudumbashree units are not treated as one single unit, rather multiple units as its different registered SHG societies. And each society’s waste collection policy will be different.Kudumbashree workers collecting segregated waste from homes.In my place, they have a policy that customers must give segregated wastes, ie Bio degradable in one bin and non bio degradable in another bin. The problem here is, even in decentralized level concept of SSM, it means each unit of waste collectors involving in waste segregation, not the public as such. Ie, if Kudumbashree unit in my locality does the waste segregation by themself, the city would gain 48 marks in this account. While in our city, its not done in that way, so no or low marks.Another unique part is that, if the city has informal collection pickers, like the rag-pickers or street urchins, the city gains more points. In Kerala, we don’t allow such people to do so and moment we see any such, they will be taken to Mercy homes for rehabilitation. The number of street urchins are too low in any Kerala city. So that means, in absence of such community (a very negligible might be there in Kochi or some larger cities), we gain zero marks in this critiea.Another simple critiea, whether panchayats/Municipalities (LSGs -Local Self Governments) have centralized workforce to clean commercial streets twice daily, including night sweeping. This is absolutely irrelevant in Kerala as commercial areas are cleaned by someone employed by that place’s merchants/trade bodies association, not Municipalities. For example, in Kochi, the Broadway market is cleaned mostly by sweepers from an agency employed by Merchants Association, not Corporation. Rarely any Municipal body has its own direct staff or outsourced staff to do so. Even if some municipal body do have its own sweepers, it may be done once in a day or so, not twice. As most of Kerala’s municipalities and Corporations are compartiviely smaller than its counterparts elsewhere, the limited budgets of these bodies don’t allow centralized cleaning.Instead for years, its done by individual associations, private resident associations etc. For example, in my colony, our resident association has hired the same Kudumbashree unit that involves in waste management to clean the road. So here, LSG is not fully involved which means zero marks.2. Landfill issues.Kerala has serious land shortage. We are one of India’s heavily densely populated states with 860 people per sqkm in our state. And that too limited mostly in tiny strip of coastal plains as rest are fully covered with thick forests and mighty Western Ghats. Naturally within this limited land, its impossible for each city to have a centralized LandfillKerala have an continuous urban strip from its north end to south end on the coastal side of the state which is the only low land(plains area). The rest half of the state are mostly mountains and thick forests, unable for any major human settlement due to environmental reasons. With this massive built up on coastal side, its impossible to differentiate independent cities as such and thus one city’s waste cannot be dropped in another city. And impossible to taken to east side which is highly environmental sensitive. For more understanding of this urban spread and its implications, check out hereKerala has an unique Urbanization pattern. Almost the entire state is now growing as One city on its west coast with a continuous urban spread. It means, when you exit from one city (a formal entity), you are entering into another city and its continuous urban spread. This means people living in one urban area will not allow waste of another urban area to be dumped as landfill in their place.Vilappilshala protests was one the biggest protests that Kerala has ever seen with people in large protesting against centralized waste management facility of Trivandrum Corporation. This has resulted in closing down the facilityThe ongoing protests in Kannur against Indian Navy’s Centralized Waste plant is a classic example, how Kerala society donot allow large scale centralized waste processing concept.This was tried out and failed extensively. Many major centralized landfills like Vilappilshala (for Trivandrum), Cheloora (for Kannur), Laloor (for Thrissur) are synonymous for protests in Kerala, after the locals violently stopped dumping wastes of cities in their neighbourhood. This is because these places itself are mostly outgrown panchayats or small towns in its own right. Why should they bear wastes of another city?This made the concept of landfills obselete in Kerala and no more new sites are developed as a government policy other than those existing. Even many existing ones are regularly criticized by locals.So approx 120 to 200 marks are lost for Kerala as we don’t endorse the policy of expanding landfills or putting more centralized waste plants.3. Irrelevant clausesThere are so many points for things, thats totally irrelevant to Kerala. For example, around 10 points are allocated for level of ads placed in public areas asking people to use toilets or engaging celebrities for such awareness. In Kerala, where everyone mostly have their own toilets at home and rarely defecates in open area, putting an AD with Vidya Balan asking whether you used toilet is as offensive as asking a Punjabi Sikh whether they shave their beards to uphold personal hygiene?We often mock Tamil Actor Abbas as toilet cleaner for his endorsement for Harpic ads. Does Govt of India expects Malayalam actors like Mammootty or Mohanlal asking people to shit in toilets in Kerala, just like how Akshay Kumar does in Hindi? Com’on, cultural sensibilities differs rapidly between places.Infact its so rude and offensive to see North Indian ads on this defecate topics in Kerala. So we rarely put such in public places as its basically mocking at Malayalee’s traditional culture of hygiene. So how we get marks in this area?Same way, when waste removal happens in totally decentralized way, its not possible for deployment of ICT. The purpose of deployment of ICT is to mointor at a centralized level. When we say, we don’t endorse that concept at all, it makes irrelevant for such. Who will then monitor? A panchayat secretary? Or a section officer in Corporation? Naturally this clause alone carries 10 points, which we straight away lose.4. Irrelevant criteria.Many criterias are totally absurd in Kerala terms. For example, cities are divided as cities less than 1 million and cities above. The problem here is how cities are defined. Most of cities’s borders are designed for political interests, ie Kochi city as such was last defined in 1967, while much of city has grown beyond its borders. Its why, in Kerala, urban aggolmeration makes sense than official city corporations/municipalities. This means Kochi and Alappuzha are treated in same way (Cochin Corporation has only 6 lakh residents whereas Greater Kochi comprising of 11 municipalities has 2.1 million while Alapuzha Municipality has 1.7 Lakh with a not much larger U/A that has less than 2.4 Lakh). Corporation of Cochin has its own landfill etc which are used by all constituents of Greater Kochi Municipalities, while Alapuzha has none as its small town. So we you compare two cities in same yardstick, the results will go horribly wrong.5. Poor use of Public toiletsOver a time, Government of India is pushing more and more public toilets to reduce Open Defecation. This alone has nearly 100 points in total. The problem here is, Kerala is one of the earliest ODF State (Open Defecation Free State). Since 1900s, Kerala houses have concept of attached toilets. Its impossible to see a house without toilets inside it and attached toilets to the room are common norm. In much older medieval era houses, common toilets were built outside the house and linked to main house via walkways. Even in poor huts, there used to be concept of Mutrapura (enclosed urinals) covered with thatched palm leaves.Due to this factor, Keralites in general donot believe in public toilets as such. Its bit shameful for public, especially ladies to use proper toilets located in footpaths or near bus stops, that opens to the road. Rather they all prefer going to a nearest restaurant to use the toilet, by ordering something.E Toilets established in Calicut (Kozhikode) disused by public due to its opening towards public areas. Calicut corporation developed several such toilets, which almost all ended up in despair due to non usuageSince 2010s, due to various Central government schemes, Municipal bodies were flushed with funds for construction Bio toilets, E-Toilets in public places. Many did construct larger number of such toilets in busy streets. But alas, a good number of them felt into despair due to disuse. Ladies find too odd to use a public toilet thats close to a busy corridor, primarily because of accustomed to use of private toilets for a long time in history. And E-Toilets complicated that. Many felt scared or inconvinent using technology oriented E-toilets that has automated opening and locking system. The improper use of such E-Toilets lead many non working.I recollect a recent experience, where in Pala (a small town in Kottayam), where there was a newly constructed Bio toilet located near roadside of a major commercial complex. The Municipality was bit more thoughtful by placing the doors from behind, so that people don’t have a feeling of opening to the road. Yet I haven’t seen people using it. My grandma wasn’t ready to use it, rather we went to a nearby Brahmin’s restaurant only to use the toilet. For using that, I ordered a cup of tea. In my experience, the public toilet was better maintained than the restaurant one. Yet I felt majority not using so, out of traditional and cultural preference.In short, nearly 1000 points out of 2000 points are skewed against Kerala’s concepts of waste management.Let me be fair myself. I am not denying that Kerala has poor track record in waste management. One factor is, Keralites, to a degree are social hypocrites. Ie, they maintain highest standards in personal hygenie, enforce bathing twice a day, strict usage of personal toilets at home, keeping personal homes neat and clean, daily sweeping and even burning Frankincense or simple woods to ward off mosquitos or similar flies; but has poor track record in public cleaniness.They are ready to throw waste outside their gate, even in main road. With strict government rules and levying of fines as well as often public questioning this tendency, people started throwing the waste in unused lands or employs private companies to take the trash, who dumps in open fields SECRETLY.Now there is another dimensional in above matters. In first case, despite of throwing waste in some unused plots, it soon gets covered with thick vegetations, thus often gets hidden from public view. This is one reason why many thinks Kerala cities are neat and clean, as the waste is hidden from public view. However if someone professionally survey, they will definitely notice this and thus reduce the total points. This is one reason, Kerala do have several infectious tropical diseases like Dengue or similar spreading fast. Its definitely the biggest black mark for the state and a classic case of hypocrisy.Now in second case, its more interesting. Though Central policy advocates large landfills in a professional way, which doesn’t happen in Kerala due to public opposition, smaller plots landfill do happen illegally. Private waste management companies deposit trash in open fields secretly and over a time, the land gets filled. And with some influence, these lands slowly get converted from Wetland classification to proper land, thus used by real estates to grab lands for real estate activity. In short, the landfill concept is illegally used by real estate mafias more than government as such for proper waste management. In some cases, public do oppose and news come out. In many cases, its ignored as they are small scale land fills, say 20 cents or 40 cents of land. But indeed affecting environment in a big way. Now when a surveyor comes to inspect, naturally they see several illegal landfills, which lowers the mark. Secondly when public says negatively about such things, it also lowers the mark. Kerala society is more vocal on rights than duties, so they may talk so much against dumping waste etc and criticize it, but not massively involved in such active waste management policies. So in any interaction with survey teams, negative responses will be higher.With all these reasons, Kerala cities cannot rank better in any SSW schemes.Thats perfectly one reason why SSM rankings for Alappuzha is 380th position out of 500 Indian cities, when United Nations Environment Program made the city as top 5 cities in the world for Sustainable model Waste management praticesWhy Swachh Bharat and UN disagree on how clean a small city in Kerala isAlapuzha Waste Management is a model worth for emulating for entire state of Kerala. Its heavily decentralized were each house as its own waste management way with heavily subsidized schemes. And for those who can’t afford that, there are community centers within each ward or area for them to use themselves (not door to door method) and independent method of plastic waste collection.The video that showcases Alappuzha’s efforts in becoming a global modelTill date, Alappuzha’s urban body has established 5,000 kitchen bins, 3,000 biogas plants, 2,800 pipe composting units and 218 aerobic composting units in all its wards to take care of 80% of its waste.Read the below, to know the extensive Decentralized method deployed by Alapuzha.https://www.thebetterindia.com/126083/kerala-alappuzha-zero-waste-cleanest-city-india-un/This means, the basic concept of Alapuzha model is damn against to majority of points that SSM looks for.We must take a look how Alappuzha suffered extreme garbage crisis 4 years back with Asianet News taking a detailed news report on so in 2014. At that time, Alappuzha was practicing a centralized system which failed.And from there, the city became a global model for sustainable waste management featured in many National and international media, with its decentralized approach.And now, its a policy of current LDF government to replicate Alapuzha across Kerala.Kerala government trying to usher in new waste management policy: CM Pinarayi VijayanBarring Kochi, none of the major cities in Kerala are going to have a centralized waste management program. Probably Kochi may be the only city that can somewhere rank in SSM in future, as a centralized plant is going to come which requires a door to door collection system with proper monitoring to avoid leakages in the system (being a contractual obligation of corporation to supply waste to the Centralized waste management company in Kochi that will convert it into Electricity)However the opposition to such centralized concept is very high even in Kochi and most of other cities donot plan such concepts. Kerala government is seriously pushing for Zero waste concept with waste management at home and limited waste at decentralized hubs etc.Naturally as Kerala gets out of Pan Indian concept of waste management, we can’t expect any higher rankings for Kerala.As years passes on, the ranking methodology and parameters are getting more skewed in favour of many cities of North than flexible system that considers localized contexts. And indeed there are lot of political factors involved too. Probably that explains why a city like Indore in BJP ruled Madhya Pradesh (that will face elections soon) has emerged as most cleanliest city in last survey when many Kerala cities are 10 times cleanlier than Indore even on mere visual check. Saying so, I am not undermining the efforts taken by Indore in improving their waste management techniques that has paid off well in MP standards.The Curious Case of a Clean Clean IndoreBut comparing Indore to Alappuzha is definitely no way going to yield any results as it varies sharply in all means.For a nation like India which is union of states and diversity being the highlight, one central yardstick is exactly like asking Fish to climb the trees in a skill test citing fairness and equality.