Swachh Delhi App: Bugs and Clueless Government Departments

Delhi government’s Swachh Delhi campaign works only in the virtual world.

How effective is the Delhi government’s Swachh Delhi app? In the past few days, the Delhi government has scarcely paused for breath in its promotion of the app (sample tweet below), so we at The Quint decided to test it out.

Delhi government has extended the ongoing 'Clean Delhi campaign' - Swachh Delhi Abhiyan - by 10 more days.1/2

— Manish Sisodia (@msisodia) December 1, 2015

We Tested it Out

Here’s what the the Delhi government claims the app will do: if you see trash and garbage lying around in the city, all you need to do is click a picture through the app and send it. The promise? The government will clean the trash up within the end of the campaign.

During the duration of this campaign, we went to five different garbage dump sites. We returned to them a few days after we got a message on the app that the complaint had been resolved.

To our dismay, each time we returned to the spot at all five locations, nothing had changed.

Anand Vihar

While searching for major garbage dumps across the city, we reached Anand Vihar bus station. Here, we found a big pile of garbage and sent in the complaint through the Swachh Delhi app. We received the resolution report on 8 December at 3:44 pm. But when we visited the site again on 12 December, the garbage had not been removed.

New Ashok Nagar

We complained about the garbage dump near New Ashok Nagar Metro station on 28 November. We received the resolution report on 30 November at 6:50 pm. But, there was no change on 12 December when we visited the site.

Pragati Maidan

We visited Pragati Maidan and complained about a big dump of debris and remains of dead trees on 8 December. We received the resolution report on 12 December at 1:37 pm, but found no apparent change when we visited again on the same day.

Kirti Nagar

Jhandewalan

We complained about this site in the Jhandewalan area on 8 December. We received a call from an MCD employee to inform us that they are not obliged to clean the debris as the area falls under the Public Works Department (PWD). We hoped that the complaint would be shared with PWD officials but, unfortunately, the site remains as polluted as it was earlier.

MCD, PWD, Govt Sending Us on a Wild Goose Chase?

We did not receive the complaint IDs for the Kirti Nagar and Jhandewalan sites. While trying to submit the photographs, despite 3G and GPS settings being on, the app would get stuck on the ‘posting your complaint’ page and the progress wheel would keep rolling.

We did, however, get resolution reports for IDs that did not match the first three, so we assume the complaints were registered – including the three times we tried to submit the complaint only to be met with the ‘posting’ screen.

We tried calling MCD officials about the missing IDs, but they didn’t have a clue as to how we could procure them. Instead, they directed us to the PWD. According to them, the whole Swachh Delhi app system was being managed by the PWD.

We called the PWD’s toll-free number. We were informed that the department did not have any details because the entire initiative was being managed by the Urban Development Ministry.

We were still hopeful about getting the complaint IDs of the last two locations, but when we checked the website of the Urban Development Ministry, we hit another dead end.

After these unsuccessful attempts, we tried to speak to AAP as well. We were told that there may have been a technical error and were asked to email the issue to CM Kejriwal.

It looks like the Swachh Delhi campaign’s success, like its app, exists only in the virtual world, not in the real one.