NEW DELHI: Over two lakh villages have become open defecation free , the drinking water and sanitation minister said on Friday. While for rural areas the next challenge is to deal with the liquid waste generated, the situation across cities and towns seems to be getting worse as urban areas struggle to manage their daily municipal waste and open urination Apathy of municipal authorities, safai karamcharis shirking their responsibilities and inadequate facilities to process solid waste remain big challenges for this flagship programme. An online survey by LocalCircles recently showed that 57% of respondents said their cities haven't become cleaner due to Swachh Bharat. But a year back only 35% had come up with the same response, clearly indicating the cleanliness drive is losing steam in urban areas.Despite the government taking several initiatives including annual cleanliness surveys and social media campaigns focusing on behaviour change there has been no significant improvement on the ground. One of the main reasons is the slow progress in setting up of plants to process solid waste. Currently, about 80% of the total 1.7 lakh tonnes of waste generated daily is dumped without processing. Delhi and Mumbai contribute almost 10% of country's total municipal waste generated daily and this is one of the reasons why the two big cities look filthy.“When big cities don't have facilities, one can imagine what is the condition of small towns, which have no funds," said a government official.An urban development ministry official said the solution to the crisis lies in pushing for greater use of compost made from city waste for farming. At present, only two lakh tonnes of compost is sold annually and existing plants with combined 15 lakh tonnes installed capacity are underutilised. Given the challenges, the Centre and state governments, continue to strive to improve the situation. The number of cities and towns declared open defecation free increased from just 58 in April 2016 to 702. Similarly, 32 lakh individual toilets have been built in comparison to only 13 lakh till April last year.