Supreme Court directs six major cities to halt manual scavenging, demanding action by February 13 | Representational Image
At the end of the first quarter of the 21st century, India continues to practice the age-old method of sending men and boys down into sewers, septic tanks and pits to clean them. Contracted for the job and provided no safety gear except an occasional harness, the sewers and tanks have turned into death traps for many.
On an average, nearly 75-80 have died every year since 2019, as the Union government itself told the Parliament. By independent estimates, this may well be around 100 a year or more. Predominantly Dalits, their social exclusion means the pathetic working conditions, even death, rarely sends the country into shock and sympathy.
The Supreme Court has had its lens trained on the issue for a few years now. After its specific orders over the past two years, the apex court, this week, rapped the Union government and ordered a complete ban on manual scavenging and manual sewer cleaning in six major metropolitan cities – Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Bengaluru and Hyderabad – to begin with.
Justices Sudhanshu Dhulia and Aravind Kumar directed the chief executive officers of these cities to submit detailed affidavits by February 13, showing how and when these practices had been stopped in their cities. The focus on the cities presumably follows the number of deaths and abysmal working conditions in them and the orders in October 2023.
By the government’s own admission, nearly 456 of 775 districts across India, or only 59 percent, were free of manual scavenging and manual sewer cleaning. Even if this was accurate, it is a matter of deep shame and grave blot on India that this work continues. India’s government seems unembarrassed. It is not the case that the law does not exist.
In 1993, the Parliament passed the Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation Act. It distinguishes between manual scavenging and hazardous cleaning, a loophole because cleaning sewers and septic tanks is not all that different from cleaning open drains and could involve handling human excreta. But it has also allowed governments in recent times to claim that there is no manual scavenging any more.
The Act prescribes more than 40 kinds of protective gear and nearly 20 cleaning devices to reduce the need for men to go down into the sewers and tanks, but as Bezwada Wilson, Magsaysay awardee and convenor of Safai Karmachari Andolan, has pointed out, it needs political will to end the practice.
With mechanised options available, it is time India stopped using cheap labour and playing with lives to have its sewers and tanks cleaned. Manual cleaning should have been a thing of the past. It is hardly the “spiritual experience” that it was made out to be by India’s beloved leader some years ago.
