Manual Scavenging is the practice of manually cleaning, carrying, disposing of or handling in any manner human excreta in an insanitary latrine (latrines which required human excreta to be cleaned manually) sewers or in the septic tanks.
What The Law says
Article 17 of the Indian Constitution abolished and penalized the practise of untouchability in any form.
Section 7A of The Protection of Civil Rights Act, 1955 penalizes and imposes fine on a person who compels any person to do any scavenging or sweeping or to remove any carcass or to flay any animal, or to remove the umbilical cord or to do any other job of a similar nature. This section clearly states that all these activities shall be deemed to have enforced “untouchability”.
Chapter II, Section 3 (j) of Prevention of Atrocities (Act), 1989 made provision of punishment for making a member of a Scheduled Caste or a Scheduled Tribe do manual scavenging or employs or permits the employment of such member for such purpose.
Parliament enacted The Employment of Manual Scavengers And Construction Of Dry Latrines (Prohibition) Act in the year 1993. This act prohibited the employment of manual scavengers, construction or continuance of dry latrines and the regulation of construction and maintenance of water-seal latrines. But, this act was brought into force in the year 1997 in the states of Andhra Pradesh, Goa, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Tripura, West Bengal and in all the Union Territories.
The failure of this act in successfully eradicating Manual Scavenging and intervention and directions from the Supreme Court forced the Union government to bring another act in the year 2013.
The Prohibition of Employment As Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation Act, 2013 (in short PEMSR, Act) prohibited the construction of insanitary latrines and employing person to do manual scavenging (Section 5 of the act). Section 7 of the same act prohibited the engagement or employment of persons for hazardous cleaning of sewers and septic tanks while Sections 8 and 9 penalized the activities mentioned in sections 5, 6 and 7.
Supreme Court of India in the case of Safai Karamchari Andolan & Ors. versus Union of India & Ors (2014) directed the State Governments and the Union Territories to fully implement the PEMSR, Act 2013 and take appropriate action for non-implementation as well as violation of the provisions contained in the act.
Present Scenario
Despite these statutory provisions and court orders, Manual Scavenging is still practised in India. On December 7, 2021, the Ministry of Social Justice & Empowerment provided the state-wise record of 58098 manual scavengers in response to the question of Lok Sabha MP of TDP, Kesineni Srinivas. This data was based on the surveys conducted by the same ministry for the identification of manual scavengers during the years 2013 and 2018.
According to this data around half of the total manual scavengers are in Uttar Pradesh while Maharashtra, Uttarakhand, Assam, Karnataka and Rajasthan are other top states on the list.
The details in the above para are about the state-wise break-up of the manual scavengers in the country. But as we know that Indian society is based on caste-based hierarchy in which the jobs done by the people of higher strata of the society was traditionally assigned as ‘pure’ and the jobs done by the people of lower strata are stigmatised as ‘polluted’. Therefore, it is interesting to identify the data of manual scavengers, caste or category-wise.
RJD MP, Prof. Manoj Kumar Jha asked a question regarding the caste-based number of persons involved in manual scavenging. In response to this Ramdas Athawale, (Minister of State For Social Justice and Empowerment) provided the category-wise data of only 43,797 manual scavengers on December 1, 2021. According to this 42, 594 manual scavengers are only from Scheduled Castes. 431 are from OBC, 421 from ST and 351 others.
This data clearly indicates that about 97% of the total manual scavengers in the country are Dalits.
Deaths Of Safai Karamcharis
According to the data provided by National Commission for Safai Karamcharis (NCSK) in response to an RTI query, at least 631 people have died between 2010 and March 2020 while cleaning sewers and septic tanks.
While responding to a question in Rajya Sabha on 28 July 2021, Ramdas Athawale (Minister of State for Social Justice) said, “No such deaths have been reported due to manual scavenging” in the last five years. This statement of the minister seems to be contradictory to the abovementioned data provided by NCSK.
National convenor of Safai Karamchari Andolan, Bezwada Wilson condemned the minister’s statement and said at least 472 people have died cleaning human excreta during this period.
The continuous death of manual scavengers is very tragic. But, the government is ashamedly busy manipulating the definition of “manual scavenging” so that it can easily reduce the death toll in the data. I believe that journalist Ajaz Ashraf has rightly argued that it is safer to be a soldier serving in Kashmir than a sewer worker.
At this juncture of the 21st century, while the developed countries are mechanising and modernising the sewage cleaning system, India still depends on Dalits for cleaning their faeces. Now, the time has come to change this mentality and to invest in technologies and innovations so that no one dies in a manhole due to the consumption of several harmful gases and asphyxiation.