India’s Housing and Urban Affairs Minister Manohar Lal kicked off the Swachh Shehar Jodi (SSJ) initiative on September 27 in New Delhi. This new program pairs top-performing cities with those needing a boost in urban waste management, aiming to clean up streets across 200 Indian cities.
The setup is straightforward: 72 high-achieving “mentor” cities will guide around 200 lower-ranking “mentee” cities. It’s one of the biggest structured mentorship efforts in urban sanitation and waste management, focusing on sharing knowledge, peer learning, and spreading best practices nationwide.
Under SSJ, mentor and mentee cities team up for hands-on exposure. They can directly copy successful strategies from the leaders to improve their own waste handling and cleanliness.
At a national event in Sonipat, state urban development ministers, mayors, commissioners, and top officials came together. They signed memoranda of understanding (MoUs) to launch a fast-paced 100-day sanitation and waste management drive. In that time, each pair will create action plans with clear goals, emphasizing experience sharing and skill transfer to tackle urban waste challenges.
S Katikithala, Secretary at the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA), called SSJ a “dynamic platform for knowledge-sharing, mentoring, and handholding.” He added, “The aim is clear: Every mentee city should improve their swachhata outcomes by learning from the best cities.”
The ministry will offer strategic guidance and policy support to make sure SSJ rolls out smoothly in states. This ties into the capacity-building efforts of the Swachh Bharat Mission, India’s flagship cleanliness campaign.
In total, nearly 300 MoUs got signed across the country, building a strong network for ongoing mentoring in urban sanitation. The results will show up in the Swachh Survekshan 2026 survey, which ranks cities on cleanliness and waste management.
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