Manual Scavenging

By Baisali Mohanty

Saraswati doesn’t remember the last time her bare hands touched the statues of the gods lying on a shaky wooden plank in a corner of her one-room house in Farrukhnagar village of Ghaziabad. She doesn’t remember the last time she prayed or fasted. She says every part of her body stinks—stinks even after multiple baths.

Every morning, 57-year-old Saraswati and almost 50 other women in the village leave their houses to physically remove human excrement (euphemistically described as night soil), from dry toilets of higher-caste families. They are what the country calls the manual scavengers. In India, the people employed to clean such toilets have always been the untouchables or dalits—and 98% of them are women.

Saraswati is one of them.

With a small mouth, deep sunken eye sockets, wide nose and sun-tanned skin, Saraswati’s face is a knot of depression and a lifelong angst.

Manual scavenging involves the removal of human excreta using brooms and tin plates. The excreta are piled into baskets that scavengers carry on their heads to locations sometimes several kilometers from the dry toilets. Dry toilets are toilets that do not flush and have no running water. People shit, shit on it again, and the entire day’s excreta from the entire family is heaped in a plane between two cemented elevations that they call latrines.

Their removal is left to people like Saraswati.

The International Dalit Solidarity Network reports that:Manual scavenging is a caste-based and hereditary occupation for Dalits  (untouchables) that is predominantly linked with forced labour or slavery. It is estimated that around 1.3 million Dalits in India, mostly women, make their living through manual scavenging, which involves removing human excrement from dry toilets and sewers.

Manual scavengers are generally women who have no other employment option and inherited the jobs from their mothers or mothers-in-law, who, in turn, inherited it from theirs. In 1901, Mahatma Gandhi termed manual scavenging a national shame and raised the issue of the horrible working and social conditions of ‘bhangis’ , as he termed them, at the Congress meeting in Bengal. On 17 June 2011, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh referred to manual scavenging as “one of the darkest blots on India’s development process” and asked all states to pledge to eliminate it by the end of 2011.

On 7 September 2013 India’s Parliament passed a law prohibiting the employment of individuals like Saraswati as manual scavengers by prescribing stringent punishment, including imprisonment of up to five years for those employing a manual scavenger. Still, it isn’t clear whether the law will have any effect on people like Saraswati. How far will this act be successful enough in fulfilling its aim of elevating these people and further ensuring their rehabilitation is an open-ended question posed not only to the government but also to the civil society?

In 2011-12, the Union budget allotted Rs.100 crore to the Self Employment Scheme of Liberation and Rehabilitation of Scavengers. This was subsequently revised to Rs.35 crore. In 2012-13, the budget allotted Rs.98 crore for the same scheme. The ministry of social justice and empowerment says the budget was reduced to Rs.20 crore as there was “no pending list of manual scavengers for rehabilitation”. The ministry added that this amount was spent surveying the situation, not on rehabilitation.

However, according to the 2011 census, there are 750,000 families that still work as manual scavengers. Most live in Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat and Jammu and Kashmir. Many states openly deny the existence of such people. But activists working for the community estimate the number to be higher, around 1.3 million, especially because the government hasn’t included the railway employees who have to clean excrement from the railway tracks, as Indian trains lack a proper waste-disposal system. The exact number of people working as manual scavengers remains disputed, and estimates range from five to more than 10 lakhs. The National Advisory Council (NAC) has recommended a fresh national survey to establish the exact number of scavengers left.

The Bill

The Bill, which came into existence on 18^th September with the approval of the President is considered to be much wider in scope and will turn out to be a successful attempt towards abolishing such an inhuman practice.

The Bill prohibits the employment of manual scavengers, the manual cleaning of sewers and septic tanks without protective equipment, and the construction of insanitary latrines.

It seeks to rehabilitate manual scavengers and provide for their alternative employment. Each local authority, cantonment board and railway authority is responsible for surveying insanitary latrines within its jurisdiction.

They shall also construct a number of sanitary community latrines. Each occupier of insanitary latrines shall be responsible for converting or demolishing the latrine at his own cost. If he fails to do so, the local authority shall convert the latrine and recover the cost from him. The District Magistrate and the local authority shall be the implementing authorities.

Such latrines, where manual scavenging happens, will have to be demolished, otherwise somebody will be engaged to do it,” Selja said, adding government will chip in with financial help.

Members from Left parties, including D. Raja of the Communist Party of India, moved a number of amendments to the Bill, which were negated and the Bill was passed unanimously.

 Loopholes: 

The Bill has a wider scope and higher penalties than the 1993 Act. The Bill, which had got a strong push from Congress president Sonia Gandhi and seeks to wipe out this “social stigma” by arranging for alternative jobs and providing other provisions to those in such work and their families got the unanimous approval of the government, but question arises how and within what time will the government be able to do so?

This bill talks about rehabilitation but no where does it mention the time frame within which the rehabilitation should be carried out, no detailed stress is also given about the kind of rehabilitation they will be provided except providing them with land. Further the provision of providing them with land is itself problematic unless and until the individual finds the need of having one. Moreover, the Act does not talk about possible action that can be taken against any authority for not implementing the provisions of the Act

The existing law prohibiting manual scavenging was enacted under the State List. There could be an argument for Parliament’s jurisdiction to enact this Bill as this regulates conditions of work, and is thus a Concurrent List   item.

Neither the state nor the center is mandated under the Bill to provide financial assistance for the conversion of insanitary latrines. This may adversely impact implementation of the Bill.

A state government can grant the Executive Magistrate the judicial power to try offences under the Bill. This may create a conflict of interest if the Executive Magistrate is also the implementing authority.

4 (1) of the Act says: Every local authority shall, – (a) carry out a survey of insanitary latrines existing within it`s jurisdiction, and publish a list of insanitary latrines, in such manner as may be prescribed, within a period of two months from the date of commencement of this Act; Critique: Here, the Act talks identification of only insanitary latrines. But, the Act does not mention of identification of spots where open defecation is done and consequently some one has to clean manually human excreta from the open spaces in urban areas.

Local authorities have no willingness, time as well as expertise to conduct surveys to identify insanitary latrines. There is also possibility that local authority will not identify actual numbers of insanitary latrines when insanitary latrines are constructed and maintained by the local authority. The survey may be on paper by local authority. Instead, the task to conduct survey may be given to some professional designated agency. Also, a period of two months is insufficient for carrying out survey of insanitary latrines.

Further on, the provisions of the Act are not intended to eradicate manual scavenging in any form. The Act talks more about insanitary latrines 2(1)(e), open drain and pits, but says not much on widespread manual scavenging going on due to open defecation for the lack of sufficient sanitation. According to World Bank, one in every 10 deaths in India is due to poor sanitation, a total of around 768,000 deaths a year. 51%, or 626 million, people in the country defecate in the open, accounting for 60% of the world’s total open defecations. Interestingly, an annual loss per person from poor sanitation in India is estimated to be $48 on a per capita basis.

The practice of manual scavenging in the Indian Railways, especially in rail coaches, will continue because manual handling of human excreta is not to be considered as manual scavenging if done with safety equipment. It should not be practiced even with safety devices. Safety equipment may be provided to sweepers for their better health, but manual scavenging is an undignified work and must be prohibited in any form. If at all a manhole worker is to be lowered in a drain, it must be listed in the Act as to what type of protective gear and other cleaning devices will be listed when rules are framed. Manhole workers must be trained by institutes like the fire brigade and only certified manhole worker be allowed to enter a drain. The act should have focused more on completely abolishing manual scavenging instead providing the government a legitimate way of carrying out such an inhuman act by the pretext of providing safety gears.

Section 39 (1) of the Act says that the appropriate government may, by a general or special order published in the Official Gazette, for the reasons to be recorded, and subject to such conditions as it may impose, exempt any area, category of building or class of persons from any provisions of this Act or from any specified requirement contained in this Act or any rule, order, notification, byelaws or scheme made there under or dispense with the observance of any such requirement in a class or classes of cases, for a period not exceeding six months at a time.

This is a major gap in the Act as it empowers the government to exempt the provisions of the Act. And consequently, manual scavenging will continue to prevail. It is very shocking that the most inhumane practice will be allowed to continue for six months, in particular if the government intends to continue with it.

Manual scavenging in any form and at any place must be stopped by the Act. It should not be practiced even with safety devices. Manual scavenging is an undignified work and must to be prohibited in any form. There should not be any exemption for effective implementation of the provisions of the Act.

The writer is associated with the prestigious Lady Shri Ram College, New Delhi. She owns to herself various articles published in several International and National Magazines, including the prestigious bilingual magazine,Jasodhara. She is also associated with various social organizations such as the World Women Organization,OYSS Women etc.