Manual scavengers — the outlawed workforce keeping India’s sanitation system running
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s recent success in the Indian elections marks a continuation of his 10 years in power with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). However, caste politics, for example in the hesitation of BJP to pursue positive discrimination policies, proved to be one of the reasons for the losses for the BJP, who no longer hold an absolute majority. The election issue about how to make India a more equal society, and especially reforming the caste system, is one that repeatedly resurfaces.
An emblematic political focus has been on improving the lives of sanitation workers whose ranks have historically been filled by so-called lower castes — most strikingly the roles taken by manual scavengers or, to use the Hindi term, ‘Safai Karamcharis’, who manually clean human waste in the sanitary system. This often dangerous work involves the cleaning, carrying, handling or disposing of human faeces with minimal or no equipment and in very challenging environments, including sewers, latrines, and open drains, where scavengers have suffocated to death.
Scavenging has been officially outlawed — a seemingly simple solution to a practice with considerable occupational health risks involved and a reaction to rid society of a problem they would rather not see. However, unofficially the practice continues in high numbers and also adds to the continuation of caste-based stigma. The 2013 Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation Act (PEMSR) made the employment of scavengers illegal, but there have been no convictions, and the rehabilitation efforts of the Act for new employment have also been ineffective, in part due to unclear legal stipulations.
The opposition Congress party argued in the recent 2024 election campaign that if they were voted into power, they would end manual scavenging and re-skill workers. However, when the BJP first became the ruling political party in India in 2014, its election manifesto also included a commitment to eliminate manual scavenging and a declaration that they would make India manual scavenging-free by 2023. This unfortunately has not happened. In a report analysing the track record of the BJP-led Union government on social justice for marginalised communities during the last 10 years, the authors highlighted that nearly a third of all country districts had yet to end manual scavenging.
Despite continued pressure from campaigners and organised movements, government reforms and criminalisation have not resulted in the needed change. Clearly making scavenging illegal and trying to reskill has not worked.
Working on a historical view of sanitation, disease control, and public health through our up-and-coming research and exhibition project ‘Typhoid, Cockles & Terrorism: How a Disease shaped Modern Dublin’ we have explored the successful and unsuccessful efforts of people working to improve health through water- and food-borne disease. What we have found is that historically the most vulnerable people are exposed to dangerous environments. Disease and death thrive on an inequality infrastructure and those that serve it.
Instead of trying to simply trying to abolish manual scavenging, which appears most desirable politically but not feasible practically, working with affected communities towards formalised and safe forms of employment should be the way forward.
The Typhoidland team are: Dr Samantha Vanderslott (Oxford), Dr Claas Kirchhelle (Inserm), Dr Carly Collier (UCD), and Dr Emily Webster (Durham) working with collaborators Dr Manjulika Vaz, Radhika Hegde, and Sakshi Saldanha (St John’s Research Institute, India).
To find out more about the Typhoidland project visit: www.typhoidland.org.
Our longer article about manual scavengers is ‘Between paternalism and illegality: a longitudinal analysis of the role and condition of manual scavengers in India’.
Our exhibition ‘Typhoid, Cockles & Terrorism: How a Disease shaped Modern Dublin’ opens on 16th June 2024.
