Coinciding with “World Toilet Day” on November 19, the Indian government announced its latest attempt to bring an end to the age-old practice of manual scavenging. The new law promises to eradicate the practice in 243 cities across India by 2021. While manual scavenging has been both formally and informally acknowledged as a social evil, it continues to ravage the Indian society. However, despite the COVID-19 outbreak pushing sanitation workers, including manual scavengers, to the frontline of the fight against the pandemic, their contributions have continued to be belittled. Against this backdrop, the announcement by the Indian government has been celebrated and applauded for its ambition. Nevertheless, like the previous attempts made by the Indian authorities, this, too, falls short of addressing some essential concerns, without which a policy on the issue cannot succeed.
This is not the first time the issue of manual scavenging has featured in Indian policy. In fact, the practice has been outlawed since 1993. Further, a legislation in 2013 expanded the 1993 document to include a more comprehensive array of workers into its ambit. It also called upon the state governments to identify and rehabilitate manual scavengers across the country. Additionally, in 2014, recognising the lack of implementation of these laws, the Indian Supreme Court mandated the provision of a ten-lakh rupee compensatory amount by state authorities to all such workers.
However, the execution of these initiatives continues to be scanty at best, with manual scavenging still prevalent today. In fact, there are some indications that there are even more manual scavengers today than there were before. In 2019, the number of occupational fatalities from the practice increased by 61% from 68 in 2018 to 110. Moreover, these merely represent the official figures, and only account for the deaths caused by immediate occupational hazards such as asphyxiation or drowning in septic tanks. They do not account for the various associated health hazards caused by diseases that are contracted by such workers, including cholera, cancer, asthma, and a host of skin conditions. Alarmingly, according to data collected by the Safai Karamchari Andolan, the life expectancy of manual scavengers is as low as 32 years. Despite such concerning statistics, there has been a total lack of responsiveness by state authorities.
Moreover, the new law does little to address these issues of enforcement, which have already led to the failure of two such acts. For instance, centric to the Indian government’s plan to eradicate manual scavenging by 2021 is the substitution of manual scavengers by machines. However, while successfully attracting applause for its ambitious timeline, the law does little to address the logistical problems in shifting to a technology-based plan for urban sanitation systems. Over the years, several such machines have been invented by young Indian engineers to provide viable substitutes for the practice. For instance, Bandicoot, which was India’s “first manhole cleaning robot,” was created by nine engineers in their twenties. It was procured by the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation and was produced by The Raheja Corp as a part of its Corporate Social Responsibility Initiative for 32 lakhs. In 2018, there were 14 other such machines at different levels of development. However, all this has been achieved with no assistance from the central or state government, who have failed to purchase these technology-based substitutes for the practice. Moreover, the lack of resources invested into the invention of a substitute for manual scavenging by the government and its authorities also indicates the lack of willingness on their part to truly expend funds on eradicating the practice.
Even assuming that the government has both the technical resources and the manpower to successfully replace the man-based system to a machine-based system, there are several other concerns that remain unaddressed by the plan. For instance, the law aims to eliminate middlemen and contractors altogether, and instead aims to grant funds directly to manual scavengers to purchase these machines. However, since the practice has been outlawed, no authority has any exhaustive data to identify the number of such workers in each state. Despite several reminders and requests by the National Safai Karamchari Commission, a body set up to overlook the practice of manual scavenging across India, state governments have refused to provide information on the number of such workers in their territories, the extent of occupational fatalities, or information on the release of mandated compensatory amounts. This lack of information will act as an obstacle for the ambitious plan of the centre, which aims to train and empower these workers, and will also hinder any attempts to rehabilitate and compensate manual scavengers and provide them with alternate jobs.
More importantly, like its predecessors, the recent legislation does not even mention the issue of caste, which is the crux of the manual scavenging practice. Under India’s hierarchical caste system, Dalits predominantly bear the brunt of carrying out society’s most deplorable tasks. It is, therefore, no surprise that the majority of manual scavengers are Dalit — a community placed at the lowest rung of the Hindu caste system in India, restricted from participating in all aspects of communal life and confined to work debasing jobs such as the aforementioned. While several city authorities and governments report that members of several castes have now begun working as sanitation workers, they predominantly occupy supervisory positions. This is primarily because of the Brahminical rules of purity, which have historically restricted the cleaning of human excreta from toilets, sewage systems, and septic tanks to the Dalit community.
Moreover, the susceptibility to caste-based violence is a significant obstacle for the members of the community to access the redressals that the law guarantees. Despite several formal attempts to uplift this community—by adopting numerous legislations and establishing committees and commissions—the caste system continues to disproportionately burden Dalits in India. In fact, the National Crime Records Bureau reported that this community’s vulnerability to physical abuse, including murder and rape has increased by 44% over the past ten years. Furthermore, violence from communities placed higher in the hierarchy has often been used as a tool to extort Dalits into continuing to practice manual scavenging despite its official ban. For example, an upper-caste sanitation official in Rajasthan said that any incidents of disobedience by the Dalit community are reported to influential members of their caste, who will, in turn, “ensure” that such an issue never resurfaces. Therefore, with such abhorrent statistics of physical and mental abuse, the members of the community are disincentivised from reporting instances of legal violations.
The Dalit community is plagued by a severe lack of autonomy on account of multiple generations of subjugation, which has not only created a cycle of poverty but has also entrenched their role in society and corroded their ability to find alternate means of income. Therefore, alongside the technological and societal hurdles that the new law must overcome, the government must also simultaneously invest in the empowerment and education of Dalits so as to facilitate their escape from a cycle of oppression that has entrapped them in the practice of manual scavenging.
Rather than making hollow promises to bring an end to the practice and setting unattainable deadlines for state and central authorities, any successful policy on manual scavenging must explicitly acknowledge and address the caste factor that has prevented the successful implementation of virtually identical initiatives in the past. Without recognizing the ground realities of the social dynamics at play in India, the lack of capacity to provide a machine-based alternative or the lack of motivation shown by state authorities, this new law is likely to be another superficial, cosmetic solution to a multi-layered problem. Therefore, while the law is admittedly well-intentioned and a step forward in the right direction, it is highly unlikely that it will successfully achieve what decades of similar attempts have failed to do, leaving the plight of Dalits and the malpractice of manual scavenging unaddressed once more.
The 2020 Manual Scavenging Law is Destined to Fail. Here’s Why
The law, by overlooking the logistical obstacles to its enforcement and ignoring the predominance of the caste factor in the practice, makes the same mistakes as its predecessors.
November 26, 2020
SOURCE: SABRANG INDIA