On 21st July, just weeks after India proudly announced its ascent as the fourth largest economy in the world, Puttaswamy, a 31-year-old labourer, developed severe breathing difficulties and died while cleaning a manhole in Akshaya Nagar, Bengaluru. For a nation whose government claims a place in the sun, the shadow it casts often goes unnoticed. Puttaswamy was one such individual under this shadow, a life lost in the unseen corners. He was not the only one. In the last five years alone, 419 sanitation workers have lost their lives cleaning manholes, septic tanks, and toilets. There are several nameless others whose deaths would have not been counted.
Manual scavenging is the practice of humans cleaning dry latrines, sewers, and open drains filled with filth and excreta. 97% of the people engaged in this work belong to Dalit communities, with Dalit women forming a significant portion. To this day, manual scavenging remains one of the biggest injustices that Indian society commits against its own people. As scholar Anand Teltumbde rightly says, “India has many shames, but the biggest of them all is manual scavenging.”
The Indian government, in its entirety, comprising the Legislature, Judiciary, and Executive, has consistently remained deaf to the issue of manual scavenging. This was evident at the UN conference in Durban in 2001, which attempted to include caste discrimination in its agenda. The Indian government strongly opposed the move, offering indefensible excuses like “caste is not race”, “it is an internal matter”, and even denying caste discrimination in India altogether.
The Employment of Manual Scavengers and Construction of Dry Latrines (Prohibition) Act, 1993, declared manual scavenging a criminal offence, prescribing up to one year of imprisonment, a fine of ₹2,000, or both for those perpetuating it. However, most states failed to adopt or implement the law until 2003, often claiming that there were no manual scavengers in their jurisdictions.
Due to the limited scope and poor enforcement of the 1993 Act, the government enacted the Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation Act (PEMSRA), 2013, which aimed not only to prohibit the practice but also to provide rehabilitation to affected workers. Yet this law too proved insufficient. To date, around 770,000 individuals are involved in manual scavenging, and according to an audit commissioned by the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, 90% of the workers who died while cleaning sewers did not have access to proper safety gear, revealing a grave lapse in enforcement and worker protection.
Thus, to answer the question of manual scavenging, one must address the perpetuation of caste structure in India across all walks of life. Despite the presence of towering achievements that its Brahminical ruling classes claim, manual scavenging remains common. For an answer to this, one must understand the class character of the Indian state.
India being open to rampant imperialist exploitation even after formal exit of the British Raj, a highly exploitative state apparatus is in motion that facilitates imperialist needs by generating and exploiting cheap labour from the Indian masses. As a result, immense unemployment, inflation, and poverty can be seen, with India ranking 105th out of 127 countries in the Global Hunger Index (GHI), fostering 6.7 million zero-food children and leaving people looking for any kind of job to sustain themselves.
With landlords and feudal forces continuing as ruling classes within the Indian state, caste structure continues unabated. Babasaheb Ambedkar said, “Under Hinduism scavenging was not a matter of choice, it was a matter of force.” With the strengthening of Hindutva forces there is a continual push towards the introduction of Manusmriti as the guiding document for governance, that codifies the Chaturvarna sytem and denigrates Shudras and women into second class citizenship. Dalits, have historically been the most exploited social stratum kept outside the Chaturvarna framework as avarnas. They continue to be the most exploited even today. Around 32.6% of people from the Dalit community are multidimensionally poor with 18.8% of India’s zero-food children belonging to them. It is from this lens that one can understand why manual scavenging continues to be thrust upon Dalits generation after generation, along with the deplorable conditions that force them to accept this dreadful job.
Under the current neoliberal Hindutva regime, it is not possible to abolish manual scavenging through mere policy level or legal reforms. While mechanisation can be one step towards reducing death toll, the abolition of an occupation such utterly devoid of human dignity requires a program aimed at the abolition of caste in society.
With the Republic of India nearing 80 years of its existence, it is a matter of profound shame that Dalits continue to die in the darkness of manholes. The Constitution that professes formal equality to Dalits at par with Bramhins, falls short of actualising it in practice. With education and employment actively excluding Dalits, the problem of manual scavenging will only get worse with passing time.
The solution to manual scavenging is not something to be searched for within the system. Rather, it is to be brought about by changing this system in its totality. A reflection on our history proves that there can be no change without a broad-based revolution that dismantles existing class and caste hierarchies. Let us educate, agitate, and organise towards that aim.
