A Dalit woman stands outside a dry toilet located in an upper caste villager’s home in Mainpuri, in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. The village has witnessed major violence against those who have tried to leave the profession of ‘manual scavenging’. Credit: Shai Venkatraman/IPS
Because India’s jurisprudence remains ill-equipped to stringently provide legal protection for Dalits, human traffickers easily kidnap and lure vulnerable Dalit women and girls into prostitution and child marriage and men and children into bonded labor in factories and on farms.
Silicosis death in Rajasthan Mines. Dominated by the Bairwa and other Schedule Caste communities, mining is the main source of livelihood in this region. The poorest of the poor live here and the death of an earning member pushes the family into further poverty.
Veeru escaped with her family and after months of fighting for her family and begging the police to protect them, she finally found refuge in a camp inhabited by other former bonded labourers. It was then that she decided to dedicate her life to freeing others like her.
Bulbul: song of the Nightingale -
One hundred and fifty workers from five spinning mills were interviewed for the report, which reveals that girls as young as 15 are being recruited from marginalised Dalit communities in impoverished rural areas in India. They are lured with promises of decent jobs, good wages and a lump-sum payment. But the reality is a 68-hour working week, poverty wages, no contracts or payslips, and being locked inside factory and dormitory compounds during working and non-working hours.
Human Rights Watch South Asia Director, Meenakshi Ganguly,says caste discrimination is partly to blame for child labour in India, as discrimination pushes many Dalit children to drop out of education.
Harvard child labour expert, Siddharth Kara, comments that caste is a key factor underlying child labour in India. He says that, “Every single child labourer that I have documented comes from a highly impoverished family unit and belongs to a low-caste or minority community.”
The Indian Government should end manual scavenging says Human Rights Watch in the new report, Cleaning Human Waste: "Manual Scavenging," Caste, and Discrimination in India. The report was released together with this short video
The Indian Government should end manual scavenging says Human Rights Watch in the report, Cleaning Human Waste: "Manual Scavenging," Caste, and Discrimination in India. The report was released together with a short video and received extensive media coverage, read key press clippings here.
kind of discrimination that Dalits suffer in Nepal in the far-western regions is called Haliya and Khali. This system of discrimination is essentially the same as Haruwa and Charuwa practices in the Terai region. Haliya are the agricultural laborers who work for grains, a maximum of 15-20 kilos of rice and the same amount of wheat annually. Khali are the people who also work as agricultural laborers, and they are paid in grains during the harvest. They go to pick up their payment directly in the field.
By Humphrey Hawksley
By Parth M.N.
The Delhi High Court has sought response from municipal agencies, especially the Delhi Jal Board (DJB), on whether they have complied with the provisions of the 2013 law prohibiting employment of manual scavengers and are providing their rehabilitation.
On attaining puberty, the dalit girl (usually belonging to Maadiga or Chalavadi communities) suffers a lifetime of sexual exploitation, stigma, superstition and disease, all in the garb of religion.
According to official records, there are an estimated 30,000 joginis – also known as devdasis or matammas – in Telangana today. An additional 20,000 live in the neighbouring state of Andhra Pradesh. In both states, over 90 percent of the joginis are from Dalit communities.According to Jyoti Neelaiah, a Hyderabad-based Dalit rights leader, “The jogini system is not just a violation of women’s rights but a also of human rights, because it’s always a Dalit woman who is made a jogini and those whom she serves are always from a dominant caste.”