Cleanliness and Sanitation will be given priority — efficient Waste and Water management systems will be set up. We will introduce Sanitation Ratings measuring and ranking our cities and towns on 'sanitation'; and rewarding the best performers.

The 2014 manifesto's cleanliness commitments come in two parts, and they are unusually specific for a manifesto. One is about infrastructure: "Cleanliness and Sanitation will be given priority — efficient Waste and Water management systems will be set up." The other is about measurement: "We will introduce Sanitation Ratings measuring and ranking our cities and towns on 'sanitation'; and rewarding the best performers."

The second was delivered and is now a fixture of Indian urban administration — Swachh Survekshan ranks cities annually and awards the winners. On that half, the promise was kept in the form it was made.

The first half is harder to grade nationally, because municipal waste is a state and local subject spread across thousands of bodies. But one national network runs its own waste system end to end and has been audited in full: Indian Railways. It generates waste at stations across the country, in coaching depots, workshops and its own hospitals, and it is a single accountable entity. The CAG's performance audit of waste management there, tabled on 8 August 2022, is therefore the closest available test of whether "systems will be set up" happened.

It starts with the absence of a system in the administrative sense: "No separate authority with clear role and responsibility was assigned the waste management task as also there was no demarcated fund allocation for waste management exclusively." Where the Railway Board had ordered environment and housekeeping wings be created in August 2015, they had not been formed in 11 divisions. And 59 of 109 stations audited had not obtained the consent to establish that the National Green Tribunal's directives require.

The physical systems were largely not there either. Facilities "such as wet waste processing, material recovery facility, provision of composting plant, waste segregation and recycling centres were not provided at 70 per cent of the stations and 90 per cent of coaching yards selected for audit", and "the basic condition of segregating bio-degradable and non bio-gradable waste was not ensured."

On plastic — the most visible waste on a train — the audit found the problem unmeasured before it was unmanaged: assessment of the quantity generated "was not done at 71 stations and 26 coaching depots", and 90 stations and 25 depots had neither the planned bottle crushing machines nor even a plastic-only bin. Waste collected from pantry cars and housekeeping-served trains "was not unloaded in secured bags at 49 stations out of 109", and at 42 of those it went into no separate bin either.

The water half of the promise fared similarly. Effluent and sewage treatment plants "planned for commissioning in 19 major coaching depots and 40 workshops, were not commissioned as of March 2020"; water recycling plants "were not provided at 86 stations"; and of 63 sanctioned automatic coach washing plants — machines that save thousands of litres per train — installation "at 43 locations out of 63 sanctioned did not commence at all".

Two findings carry direct risk to people. On hazardous waste, the rules for storage and labelling were breached "in 102 units (out of 131 selected)", which the audit describes as "a potential threat for the environment and people engaged in these units". And in railway hospitals, 46 of 72 had no secured room for bio-medical waste, 15 disposed of it themselves for want of equipment — the audit's words are "endangering safety of public health" — and 52 had no committee overseeing it at all.

The ratings promise was kept. On the systems promise, the one national organisation whose waste management has been audited in full was found, seven years on, without a responsible authority, without earmarked money, without segregation at most of its stations, and with the treatment and recycling plants it had sanctioned largely unbuilt. Our verdict is lacks context.