Manual Scavenging
- Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh, India, Oct 2007. Niita Tank, 35, cleans the dry latrines of 25 houses and gets 43 eurocents per house per month. According to beliefs, Dalits are unclean, so treating human waste is left for Dalits such as Niita.
Manual scavenging is a caste-based and hereditary occupation for Dalits that is predominantly linked with bondage.
It is estimated that around 1.3 million Dalits in India, mostly women, make their living through manual scavenging - a term used to describe the job of removing human excrement from dry toilets and sewers using basic tools such as thin boards, buckets and baskets, lined with sacking, carried on the head.
Manual scavengers earn as little as one rupee a day. Though this vile and inhumane practice was abolished by law in India in 1993 the practice is deeply entrenched in South Asian societies. A historic Supreme Court Ruling in May 2009 may help bring an end to this abhorrent practice in India. The Court held Government appointed District Collectors responsible for not eradicating the demeaning and hazardous practice.
Dalit scavengers are rarely able to take up another occupation due to discrimination related to their caste and occupational status, and are thus forced to remain scavengers. They are paid less than minimum wages and are often forced to borrow money from upper-caste neighbours in order to survive and consequently they end up maintaining the relationship of bondage.
Campaigning to stop manual scavenging by 2010
In 2007, the International Labour Organisation (ILO) Committee of Experts urged the Government of India to, “take decisive action to eradicate manual scavenging and to report on nation and state-wide action taken to put an end to this practice and on the progress made in the identification, liberation and rehabilitation of scavengers." This same year, the ‘Liberation movement of those employed as scavengers’ (Safari Karamchari Andolan-SKA) launched an international campaign - ‘Action 2010’ demanding an end to manual scavenging by the October 2010 Commonwealth Games, in Delhi. The logo of the Commonwealth Games is ‘Humanity, Equality, Destiny’, all terms that the Indian Government fails to live up to for as long as caste discrimination, including manual scavenging, continues to be practised in the country.
DSN-UK’s FOUL PLAY campaign was launched in solidarity with the SKA and makes a number of recommendations to the Indian and the UK Governments, as well as the Commonwealth Secretariat which they are expected to fulfil before hosting the 2010 games. DSN-UK supports SKA in its demands including the release of over Rs. 800 crores for the rehabilitation of Manual Scavengers. The campaign briefing can be read on the Dalit Solidarity Network UK (www.dsnuk.org) website, working in conjunction with the SKA to realize these campaign goals.
Key Resources
Steps towards the Elimination and Eradication of Manual Scavenging Practice - a manual for Advocacy on Manual Scavenging.
Presentation of the Advocacy Plan on the Eradication of the practice of Manual Scavenging.
Fact finding report on atrocities on Dalits in Maharashtra, 2008 – 2009.
Caste based discrimination - the continuing curse of manual scavenging (chapter from the AHRC 2009 report on India)
Outlook India (26th October) Dalit children forced to clean school toilets in Gujarat.
More information
> See a video about manual scavenging
> Support the DSN-UK campaign 'Foul Play' for the eradication of manual scavenging by 2010
> Safai Karmachari Andolan - a movement to eradicate manual scavenging in India
