Indore: The cleanest city of India, Indore, will now lead and develop India’s 'cleanest Global Hub for Sanatan Dharma' and tourist spot in Ayodhya. The historic city in Uttar Pradesh will be built on Indore’s clean city model with the help of Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Indore.
An MOU between IIM-Indore and Municipal Corporation of Ayodhya (MCA) has been signed for the project with the institute expected to begin the work as early as next week.
“We would be issuing work order for beginning the task next week and hope to begin the work about 2 days after that,” Vishal Singh, MCA commissioner, said.
Ram city to follow Ahilya Nagari’s cleanliness model
Singh said IIM-Indore was the natural choice as the city automatically came to his mind while thinking of developing the cleanest international tourist destination in India.
"Indore has been a pioneer in the transformation of urban life and services. We considered that IIM Indore, being in Indore must have been able to absorb these innovative strategies. We hope that they understand how Indore has been able to turn things around and will help us to replicate the same to built Swacch Ayodhya," he said.
He said the plan is to make Ayodhya global hub of ‘Sanatan Dharma’.
"Ayodhya was a small municipality until now. We have recently had a proper municipal corporation. We are planning to make it into a global hub of ‘Sanatan Dharma’," he said.
On what he expects from IIM-Indore, Singh said, "The gap is too huge considering the manpower that we have. We will need a strategy that works in India. We are hoping that IIM Indore will help in bridging the gap and work efficiently on replicating Indore’s model."
The IIM team will be headed by its director Prof Himanshu Rai and will include four eminent professors - Prof Ganesh N (Economics), Prof Prashant Salwan (Strategy and International Business), Dr Shruti Tewari (Associate Professor and trained social psychologist) and Prof Aditya Deshbandhu (specialist in new media studies and emerging field of game studies).
What will IIM Indore do?
1) Replication of best practices of Indore model of cleanliness in MCA, Ayodhya, with special enhancements for maintaining cleanliness standards as an international spiritual tourism destination.
2) Drafting a plan for implementation of information, education and communication (IEC) as per Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM) programme.
3) Organisation of training/capacity building programmes for Ayodhya MCA employees.
4) Organisation of training programmes in Project Management and best practices for Public officials of MCA, Ayodhya.
Rai said the work has already begun for making a detailed action plan to develop birthplace of Lord Ram, Ayodhya, as the "most wondrous and clean spiritual tourism destination in the world".
"Ingraining the focal points of Indore’s success as India’s cleanest city will form an important part of entire exercise. We’ll first start working on information, education and communication facets of the Swachha Bharat Mission. We will do a baseline study to assess the various processes that the Human Communication Channel utilizes to create awareness and disseminate information and then design a communication specifically for Ayodhya," Prof Rai said.
I will personally head the five-member team on the project, he added.
Under the leadership of Prof Himanshu Rai, IIM-Indore has got the Triple Crown accreditation of AMBA, AACSB and EQUIS and has made it to the list of 100 institutions in the world to have the honour.
