This lesson will focus on the situation of Dalits in the Indian state of Gujarat, in particular those working as manual scavengers and manhole workers.

A. Caste discrimination in Gujarat

(While this section focuses on Gujarat, cases of caste discrimination can be found throughout India.)

India’s western state of Gujarat has a population of 50.67 million (according to the 2001 census). Of these, an approximate 3.6 million are Dalits, representing 7.1 per cent of the state’s population. They include the Vankars, Chamars, Garodas, Mahyavanshis, Senva, Turi Barots, Dangasiyas, Nadiyas, Hadis, and Valmikis. More than 80 per cent of the Dalits in Gujarat are daily labourers, the majority of which are in the agricultural sector. Half of the Dalit population is landless or owns less than one acre of land, which forces them to work on the land of dominant castes.

The practice of untouchability is very common in Gujarat and occurs in the following forms:

• In rural areas, Dalits are often not allowed to engage in cultural and social activities with the rest of the community, including entering temples, sitting in the main spaces of villages, taking part in religious programs, and eating with the rest of the community during village ceremonies.
• Dalits are often landless, as non-Dalits often own the majority of land in the villages, and government officials often do not enforce laws and policies to allocate land for them. In those cases where the government does allocate land for the Dalits, they are often denied access to that land because of the practice of caste-based discrimination in the villages. 
• Dalits are also not allowed to use the same resources/items as non-Dalits in the communities; they are not allowed to rent or even enter homes of non-Dalits, use the same wells, eat and drink from the same dishes, they are not allow to enter barber shops, they are not allow to drink tea in the cup from the tea stall.
• In schools, Dalit children are often forced to sit separately from the rest of the students during the midday meal. They are the only whom asked to clean latrines in the schools.  (As a result of this caste-based discrimination in schools, Dalits are often less educated than the rest of the community.)
• Attempts to set up stores in villages by Dalits are often unsuccessful.  Due to untouchability practices, the rest of the villagers refuse to purchase things from their shops.
• Dalits are forced to do some of the dirtiest jobs in Gujarat.  For instance, manual scavening is still widely practiced almost entirely by women belonging to the Valmiki asked to clean latrines in the schools.
• Government authorities often deny basic needs such as electricity, and water to Dalit families, while they provide them for non-Dalits.  When Dalits petition the government to provide these facilities, their requests are often ignored.
• When Dalits do try to stand up for their legal rights, members of the dominant castes often assault them and/or practice social boycotts against the community.
• The SC/ST (Prevention of Atrocities) Act: 1989 is often not implemented properly (i.e., cases are either not registered under the Act when they should be, or are not registered under the relevant provisions) due to discriminatory practices by government officials. 

The story of Geeta illustrates many of the above practices. Geeta lives in Jetpura village, Gujarat. While the upper caste community occupied the middle of the village with easy access to the market, bus stop and water tank, the Dalits lived at the far end of the village. There were 125 Dalit families living there, 45 of which were Valmikis.

Geeta lives in a one-room house with her parents, grandparents and four younger siblings. Both her parents work as manual scavengers, while Geeta helps her grandparents to make brooms at home. Once a week, an agent comes to provide the raw material (a particular kind of dry leaves) to make the brooms and collect the finished ones. They receive Rs 2 per broom, which is sold in the market for between Rs 12–15.

Geeta wanted to study, but from an early age she and her three sisters helped the family in its work. She dreams of marrying an educated person who is not involved in caste based jobs such as manual scavenging, removing dead animals or playing drums on special occasions. As a child, Geeta used to accompany her mother to clean household toilets and sewage. Those families would give her mother some leftover food, clothes and Rs 15 per month. Geeta recalls that one of the employer’s infants wanted to play with Geeta. When his mother saw Geeta touching the child however, she scolded and hit her. Geeta was tied to a tree for the rest of the day. When Geeta’s mother begged the lady to let Geeta be, she was verbally abused and told not to come to work anymore. Subsequently, even the employers’ neighbours fired her mother. The lack of work also meant the lack of leftover food, resulting in many nights of sleep on empty stomachs. When her mother started her work again sometime later, Geeta no longer accompanied her.

The leftover food brought home by her mother was not always fresh or edible, and many times her family fell ill after eating it. Once, all her family members were hospitalized due to food poisoning and they had to spend a large amount of money on medicine. After that incident, they stopped eating leftover food.

One day Geeta went to the local school for get an admission form for her little brother Karan. The first teacher told to send her father. Finally after many requests he was ready. However, Geeta feels that the Teacher did not treat her very well. She returned home, happy and told her father that the teacher gave permission for Karan to go to school from next day. But then Geeta found that her brother Karan was not happy and asked him the reason. Karan told her that he had been treated badly in school. Other student insulted him with (caste based) slurs and the teacher told him that if he wanted to attend school he would have to clean the toilets as it was his duty because he is ‘Bhangi’. The teacher doesn’t allow him to sit in the front row, never checks his lessons and never talks to him. “So,” said Karan “I don’t like to go school alone.” After sometime he left the school altogether and now spends most of his time playing and gambling with other Dalit children. This is the situation of many Dalit children, who lack support in pursuing their education.

Manual scavengers

Manual scavengers are people who manually remove or dispose human excreta. Although the practice was eradicated in Europe and the west with the invention of flush toilets, India continues this practice for its dry (non flush) latrines. Dry latrines are walled enclosures with open ceilings and empty floors made of concrete or stone where people can defecate. From the advent of the caste system, the disposal of waste and human excreta was relegated to the lowest layer of society. These people came to be treated as polluted or untouchable due primarily to the nature of the activities they performed. They were forced to live outside the limits of upper caste dwellings and were not allowed to enter the same temples or drink water from the same wells as upper caste individuals. This ex-communication and marginalization effectively meant that a person born in this community was demoted for life to carry out the same degrading tasks which were performed by his earlier generation. Members of the community had no resources to seek any alternative employment.

The practice of manual scavenging was legitimized during British rule, with the operation of dry latrines in military establishments and railway stations. To avoid the shame associated with the practice, the British called the manual scavengers “night soil workers”; a change of name did nothing to change the marginalization and abuse faced by this community.

Manual scavenging is carried out without any form of protective gear. Even simple equipment like a face mask is not provided. Their work begins in the early hours and continues past midnight. The human faeces is manually collected into buckets or baskets using brooms and spades and carried away to an area where the waste is discarded. Often the scavengers carry this nauseating waste on their heads. Many scavengers suffer from dangerous viral and bacterial infections which affect their skin, eyes, limbs and respiratory system including tuberculosis.

There are three main types of scavengers: municipality workers, contract workers, and those working in private households. While municipality workers have a fixed salary and job, this is not the case for contract and private household workers, who are offered work sporadically and paid low wages. The majority of manual scavengers are women, who are involved in some of the most degrading activities, including cleaning toilets and excreta with their bare hands and disposing of the waste in hand-pulled carts or in baskets carried on their heads.

Apart from the dry latrines, the manual scavengers also have to clean human waste from streets and fields, where a significant of number people defecate due to a lack of private toilets. Around Ahmedabad, the capital city of the state of Gujarat, scavengers work in locations populated by migrant workers, near well developed residential areas. The population of these locations varies from between 5000-15,000 individuals. None of their dwellings have toilets, while the few existing public toilets are not enough for so many people. Moreover, most of the toilets’ flush systems do not work or water is not available. The toilets operate from 6:30am until 9pm; anyone needing the toilets before or after this time has to do their business in the open. People who cannot or do not want to pay for using the public toilets also sit in the open. In addition, these locations have drainage systems that are usually choked up due to a lack of cleaning and maintenance. Similarly, the few garbage bins available are overflowing, not having been emptied for a long time; garbage lies everywhere.

Nanajibhai Makwana has been a worker with the Ahmadabad Municipal Corporation’s sanitation department for the past seven years, but he has never been offered a permanent job. He is not happy with his daily work of cleaning human excreta, but does it out of necessity. His work area has a population of more than 15,000 people, with only two pay-and-use toilets, which are not used because of their filthy condition and as people do not want to pay. Instead, they use any convenient spot in the street as their free toilet, which Nanajibhai then has to clean.

According to Nanajibhai, the Corporation only gives them a broom and iron plate for cleaning. It used to provide them with soap as well before, but no longer does so.

Nanajibhai said he also has to destroy dead animals; “Sometimes it is unbearable for us because it smells so bad. If you work in that condition you cannot eat your food for many days. But we have to do this otherwise we will not get money for that day. If we refuse then the officers tell us there is no need to come to work from tomorrow. So it our helplessness we are not permanent workers.”

When Nanajibhai was asked if he had any habits of smoking, drinking or chewing tobacco, he laughed and said he cannot live without drinking. “What do you think, we like this work? Are we happy with this work? Being born as a Valmiki is our only fault. Sometimes it is difficult for me to eat as my hands literally stink. If I did not drink, I would not be able to work.”

Nanajibhai said that he and his wife just want the government to consider their working situation and provide them with a proper system and equipment for work. “I know this work is banned by law but we have to do these because we have no option. How can we survive without this work? I never wish that our children do the same job. I have three children, two daughters and one son, and I sent them all to school.”

Prohibition of dry latrines and abolishing manual scavenging

It was not until 1993 that the Indian government passed a law to ban the practice of manual scavenging. The Employment of Manual Scavengers and Construction of Dry Latrines (Prohibition) Act, 1993, prescribes punishment to an employer who employs manual scavengers and also to those who construct dry latrines. The punishment prescribed is imprisonment for up to one year and/or a fine. In cases where the employees are the members of the Scheduled Caste or the Scheduled Tribe, the employers are also liable to prosecution under the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989.

It took about four years for the central government to even notify the law in the government gazette. Not all states in the country have implemented this law. According to a written statement submitted to the UN Human Rights Council in August 2008, the Asian Legal Resource Centre (ALRC), sister organization to the AHRC, noted that

The Indian Railways, the largest rail network in the world, employs the largest number of manual scavengers. Unofficial surveys conducted by various non-governmental organizations and research groups project that about 1,200,000 persons are employed as manual scavengers in India. These surveys also project that among the manual scavengers, 98% are Dalits, of which 95% are females. Manual scavenging is however prohibited by law in India.

In 2003, the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment of India admitted that there are about 9,200,000 dry latrines in India as of 2002. In the absence of any specific government schemes to rehabilitate manual scavengers during the past four years, the number of persons employed as manual scavengers has in fact increased. The rapid expansion of urban areas and the scarcity of water has increased the number of dry latrines.

[…] According to a study conducted by the Safai Karamchari Andolan about 33% of Indians still use dry latrines. Another 33% of the population do not have toilets in their houses and find it convenient to defecate in open spaces. In spite of express provisions in the law, nobody has yet been punished in India for employing manual scavengers or for the construction and maintenance of dry latrines in India.

[…]

The Minister for Social Justice and Empowerment, Ms. Meira Kumar, in March 2008 urged the Union Rural Development Minister, Mr. Raghuvansh Prasad Singh, and Minister of State for Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation, Ms. Selja, to ensure that all dry latrines in rural areas of India are converted into water-seal latrines by March 2009. March 2009 is also set to be the target date for rehabilitation of all manual scavengers in India.

March 2009 has come and gone, and there still exist close to a million Dalit manual scavengers in India today. Even in Gujarat, which claims to be a manual scavenging free state, close to 61,000 persons are still involved in this degrading activity. Unless the government takes concrete steps to end manual scavenging, laws on paper and mere rhetoric will do nothing to rehabilitate these Dalit workers. Laws and policies must be strictly enforced.

Manhole workers

Apart from working as manual scavengers, the Valmiki community are also employed as manhole workers, to clean the country’s drains and sewers. Unlike most countries where machines are used to pump out drains, India continues to force Dalits to do this work. Manhole workers are either employed by Municipal Corporations or by private contractors or companies. Neither of the employers follow any safety standards, leading to great concern for the safety of thousands of workers.

Like manual scavengers, manhole workers work without any protective gear or equipment. They are required to climb into the sewer, scoop a bucketful of dirt, come out and hand it over to an assistant, before going in again. This operation is usually repeated several times. In Gujarat, during the last 10 years more than 160 manhole workers have died during their work as reported in local newspapers.

The rainy season is the most dangerous time for the workers as the sewers are flooded. They enter the manholes without a rope attached and at times have difficulty finding their way back due to the dark waters. In the words of one manhole worker, “Many of us have decomposed and we might also die but this is the only livelihood for us. Not one of us lives till old age, if one does not die in an accident, a disease kills him.”

According to a study carried out by an NGO in Ahmadabad, the Sewerage Department of the Ahmadabad Municipal Corporation employed 1,200 workers involved in cleaning the sewers. The majority of these workers belonged to the Valmiki community. The study revealed the presence of toxic chemicals like chlorides, hydrochlorides, sulfates, nitrates and even metals like mercury, lead and chromium in the sewers, as well as sharp pieces of glass and metals.

Due to this, workers were suffering from various illnesses, including respiratory diseases, urinary tract infections and a range of skin diseases, eye disorders, gastrointestinal ailments, and even lung cancer. Furthermore, these workers had no access to basic amenities such as adequate housing, drinking water or electricity.

Women

It is commonly accepted that women suffer more from human rights violations than their male counterparts, and this is no different for Dalit women, who suffer from both caste and gender based violations. The majority of Dalit manual scavengers and sweepers are women. In return for cleaning filth and human excreta with their bare hands, they get leftover food, old clothes and/or cash from their upper caste employers. After suffering from discrimination by their teachers and upper caste classmates, young Dalit girls drop out of school and join their mothers as scavengers.

Many Dalit women work as agricultural labourers. They have no fixed hours and are not paid wages according to the prescribed rates. Young girls work in tobacco and cotton units. It is not uncommon for them to be sexually abused by their employers, particularly when they are forced to work night shifts.

In other instances, when their menfolk are unable to repay their loans to their landlords, Dalit women and girls are forced to work as house servants for them. They are then required to do all their domestic work, including cleaning the cattle shed, bringing fodder for the cattle, cleaning and sweeping the house. Again, the chances of sexual abuse by the landlords and their family members are high. The wages they may earn, if at all, are very low.

Another inhuman practice is the Devadasi system, ‘temple prostitution’. Devadasi literally means God’s (Dev) female servant (dasi). Many Dalit girls between 6-8 years of age are forced into this practice. Once a girl enters the temple in this manner, she is shunned by society and has no chance of marriage. The girls are raped by temple priests and upper caste persons. The Devadasi system continues to flourish in India, particularly in the states of Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka. It is interesting to note that while upper castes cannot tolerate sharing water, utensils and even temples with Dalits, sexual intercourse with Dalit girls is permissible.
 
India’s caste and patriarchal systems give few opportunities to Dalit women, and their plight receives little attention. Customs such as the payment of dowry and child marriages make Dalit women more vulnerable and easily abused. They are frequently subjected to verbal abuse and violence. Many times they are victims of mass attacks, gang rapes, and are forced to parade naked. Dalit women get no protection from the police or judiciary and when they have the courage to file complaints little is done to investigate them.

Questions For Discussion

1. Why is manual scavenging considered a derogatory form of labour?
2. Discuss why despite having a law against the practice, manual scavenging continues in countries like India.
3. What is the link between a non-functioning justice system and the prevention of social evils?