Not just open defecation, Swachh Bharat should also end India's caste mess

In addition to mechanising sanitation systems, Swachh Bharat should strictly enforce the anti-manual scavenging law, including against government officials who engage in caste discrimination.

“We don’t get any other job no matter where we go. I have tried. I know this is discrimination, but what can I do?” In June 2014, when I met 18-year-old Bablu, he was working through a contractor for the government, cleaning garbage and excrement from drains in Bharatpur city in Rajasthan state.

Bablu is a Dalit. His parents were cleaners. After he completed eighth grade, more schooling than his parents had, he said he looked for a job that could lift him out of the status accorded at birth by the caste structure. He wanted something that better matched his skills.

Bablu says he was thrilled when he secured a job interview in a hotel because he wanted to train as a waiter. But as soon as the manager heard his caste, Bablu was hired instead to clean toilets. Others with a similar education who were not Dalit, got the waiter jobs.

Bablu quit the hotel job soon after. He is now among thousands of Indians who are “manual scavengers,” manually cleaning human excrement from private and public dry toilets, open defecation sites, septic tanks, open and closed gutters and sewers.

They are forced into this work because they are usually from caste groups customarily relegated to the bottom of the caste hierarchy and confined to livelihood tasks viewed as deplorable or too menial by higher caste groups. Bablu, like most people who do this work, is from the Valmiki caste, a sub-caste discriminated against even by other Dalits. They usually work without protective gear, not even gloves. For generations, women working as manual scavengers would carry baskets of human waste on their heads.

On September 15, Prime Minister Narendra Modi opened a nationwide movement, Swachhata Hi Seva (Cleanliness is Service) as part of his flagship program Swachh Bharat or Clean India Mission focused on ending open defecation and sanitation. He called on people to participate in the drive, describing it as a service to the nation and picked up a broom himself to set an example. But he didn’t address manual scavenging.

India reiterated the ban on manual scavenging in 2013 with the Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and Their Rehabilitation Act. The law recognises a constitutional obligation to correct the historical injustice and indignity suffered by manual scavenging communities by providing alternate livelihoods and other assistance...Read More

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