The city of Surat has undergone a facelift in the post-plague period. Today it is acclaimed as the second cleanest city of the country. How has this sudden change come about? Whose and what kind of intervention made this change possible? Besides cleanliness, what other changes in the spheres of sanitation and hygiene have taken place? What are the constraint and limitations of such an intervention? Such, and other questions are explored by the article as it delineates the relationship between administration and politics, the state and the civil society.