Manual Scavenging in India

Manual scavengers are the people who are employed for manually cleaning, carrying, and disposing of human excreta with bare hands without any sort of protective gear. This job is mainly done by the Dalit people. In the Indian society the Dalits are the certain caste, who are considered to be untouchables and enlisted as a Scheduled Caste. The use of the term Untouchable has been declared illegal by the constituent assembly of India in 1949. Yet, even today untouchability is practised, and the greatest scourge is felt by the manual scavengers whose main occupation is cleaning of latrines and disposing of dead animals from the village setup. As manual scavenging is considered as a filthy job it is pawned off to the people of the lowest caste, i.e., the Dalits. Strangely enough the Dalits who work as a manual scavenger are considered wretched and polluted by other sub-caste Dalits also.

Manual Scavenging is an inhuman practice which violates Articles 15,17,21,341,342 of the Indian constitution. Manual scavenging further violates the international human rights like Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), The International Convention on The Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD) and The Convention on The Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (CEDAW). The world has accepted that a person’s caste or creed should not be the leading factor for his choice of occupation, still in Indian society the Dalits are forced to perform the services of a manual scavenger hereditarily.

International Labour Organization and different types of Manual Scavengers:

The different types of manual scavengers enlisted under the ILO are:

· First are the group who are made forcefully employed for the removal of human excreta from public streets and dry latrines.

· Cleaning of Septic Tanks comes second

· Lastly are the Manual Scavengers who are employed to dump dead animals, this practice can mainly be found in urban areas.

Deaths of Manual Scavengers

In 2013 Manual Scavenging was officially banned in India with the “Prohibition of Manual Scavenging and Their Rehabilitation Act”. It has been seven years already still the deaths of manual scavengers continue to be reported constant from across India. Since 2000, when the Safai Karmachari Aandolan (SKA) started recording the figures it has pegged the death count in 1760. The important component for the Manual Scavenging Rehabilitation Act, i.e., Rehabilitation program has suffered the most. Of 42,203 identified Manual scavengers all over India only 1682(Year-2018),9789(Year 2019) Manual scavengers received an average monthly stipend of 3000.

Our present Government , that is, the BJP government who came to power in 2014 and made “Swachh Bharat Abhiyan” one of the catchwords of the campaign, which was basically to eliminate open defecation and to improve solid waste management in urban and rural areas of India, but from the rehabilitation project mostly the male manual scavengers were provided with opportunities to switch professions and they were the ones who received stipend. However, according to the surveys 95% of the manual scavengers are females. The manual scavengers are forcibly hidden from the public sphere and have no voice or dignity as they are considered to be polluted and are tagged as untouchables which abolishes them from having a normal social life as they are not permitted to visit any public gatherings and shops. The most pathetic condition is of the Dalit women. They are basically forced to inherit the practice of manual Scavenging after they are married. The females are pressurized by the community and by the household to continue this unhygienic practice because their households seldom does not have any alternative income for their livelihood, plus the women are given less amount of money for performing as a Manual Scavenger compared to a male.

Article 17 of the Indian constitution banned the practice of untouchability in 1950, but the Dalits still face widespread discrimination. Although the Indian constitution passed several acts to protect them still the people of the higher castes still expect and demand that Dalits to perform their traditional Manual Scavenging profession mostly without payment. Every time the Dalits refuse to perform, they face extreme violence from the upper caste and sometimes are even boycotted like they cannot buy anything somewhat totally abolished by the other people of the society.

Dalit children’s condition is far worse, they are often subjected to human rights violation and are the common victims to bonded slavery. People trick them to boned work as bonded labour even though bonded labour was outlawed long ago by our constitution, sometimes are forced to work as a free labour to payoff the debts of his\her parents. Dalit girls were often selected ass devadasi (marriage to the temple deities) and were often forced to perform sexual services for the priests. On human rights pages and newspaper people can often find countless cases of Dalits who have been beaten, tortured, raped, killed, or had their homes burned.

The law of prohibition of Manual Scavengers was first passed in 1993, but in these 27 years no case was found by any district collectors against the violator of the law, as the duty of searching for these kind of cases was given to the district collectors. The progress in eradicating manual scavenging is almost null, although it has been 27 years. It took us many years to realize what Ambedkar once said ages ago- “No Law is implemented on its own, the power of the people is needed to push it”. Dalit movements have never been able to champion itself in the liberation of manual scavenging the basic reason being the cast-based thinking of the people of our country. Every single individual of our country tries to solve situations with a caste-based mindset. Ambedkar always used to believe that in a social structure the unclean, unhygienic works are often pawned off the slave class and Manual Scavenging is a classic example of what he tries to address. Ambedkar once criticised Gandhi on the context that Gandhi once said “Manual Scavenging is an honourable profession and thus promotes its continuity in India” to which Ambedkar stated the basic truth caste ideology in answer to Gandhi’s quote he said “Dalits are manual scavengers by birth, they inherited the profession, the sermon that the work of manual scavenging is good for untouchables and the attempts to link the practice with the ideal service is a cruel joke played on the helplessness of the people belonging to this caste”.

Why most people in India defecate in open?

The government latrine construction and the awareness spread about open defecation constitutes bad health, but it remains stubbornly widespread in rural India. According to the surveys by various NGO’s specially SKA about 40% of the households and 13% of urban households defecate in open. Mostly these people prefer to defecate in open even if they may have proper latrines. The urban people’s belief about purity and pollution is one of the main reasons for open defecation. Moreover, the caste system and untouchability discourage people from using proper and affordable pit latrines prescribed by WHO and subsidized by the government. In rural households open defecation is seen as promoting purity and strength, specially by men. Even if they are supplied with subsidized pit latrines their rigidity makes it impossible to make them understand the science and various possible disease which can infect them if they defecate in open, it is often found that the latrine pits given by the government is often used as a place to wash clothes. So just subsidizing to pit latrines is not enough to encourage them to stop defecating in open ground. They should be thoroughly educated about the diseases than can spread due to that.

Bezwada Wilson And Safai Karmacahri Andalan (SKA)

Bezwada Wilson is an Indian Activist and one of the founding members of SKA.

SKA is an Indian Activist Organisation that has been campaigning for eradication of manual scavenging, which has already been declared illegal by the government which has already been declared illegal by the government. The works of the SKA has already been recognised by the Ashok Foundation. SKA initiates its filing of a Public Interest Litigation in the supreme court of India and the individuals signed the affidavits of the litigation naming all the states and government department as violators of Manual Scavenging Prohibition Act. PIL being the most important step taken by SKA to abolish Manual Scavenging. There were 23 hearings in 2010 the act was enforced, and 16 members were held in custody for violation of the law.

Why the government failed to eradicate Manual Scavenging

Since the act of 1993, the government mostly directed its employment scheme on Dalit men only and ignored the female manual scavengers although according to the surveys 95% of the manual scavengers are female who are basically made captive of the tradition of manual scavenging and forced by their household to continue with that profession. No proper government body to monitor and enforced the Act of 1993 or for the implementation of the scheme therefore there is no one to look over if there are people who are violating the law by forcefully making the Dalits clean open defecated wastes. The states ignorance to intervene and search for evidence of dry latrines is one of the main reasons people are still able to employ manual scavengers.