In 1999, a safai karmachari (sanitation worker) showed up at photojournalist Sudharak Olwe’s desk. He narrated stories from his life and the deaths that he had witnessed around him. Before leaving, he asked Olwe to come see him at his home someday. Six months later, Olwe visited various pockets of Mumbai where workers like him lived.
“Their buildings were in bad condition, really dark and dingy, with no electricity or water. And there were so many people living here, often two families in a flat. It was shameful,” Olwe recalls.
“These enclaves were in important places, often not very far from where the municipal corporation offices were located. Their work comes under emergency services and is important for the city. Yet there was no respect or dignity for it. These were invisible people, who would go about their work before Mumbai came to life,” he adds
He soon started following these workers and documenting their lives. He observed them clearing loads of garbage that contained everything from nails and glass to dead animals, and entering manholes to clear blockages. Most were working without adequate gear. A few of them would be under the influence of alcohol to help them deal with the nature of their work.
He learnt that the unhygienic surroundings often led to ailments and illnesses, and in a few cases, even deaths. A 2015 paper on manual scavengers by Shaileshkumar Darokar from the Tata Institute of Social Sciences found that the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai had lost 2,614 conservancy workers between 2004 and 2013 — an average of 261 deaths each year. And close to a quarter of those he interviewed mentioned that they had lost a family member, who was employed as a conservancy worker.
“They asked me why I was taking photos because they felt like nothing was going to change in their lives. It was horrible to see a human being do this work,” Olwe says.
Things aren’t much better two decades on. This week, two workers cleaning a sewage treatment plant were found dead in Bengaluru, while another died in Chennai. And earlier this month, a sanitation worker perished while cleaning an open gutter in Secunderabad.
During the Budget 2023 announcement last week, finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman allocated Rs 100 crore towards the National Action Plan for Mechanised Sanitation Ecosystem (NAMASTE) to transition from “manhole to machine-hole mode”, with focus on “scientific management of dry and wet waste.”
But the recent past makes it evident that it may be a while before this target is achieved.
A case in point is the outlawing of manual scavenging in 1993 by the Employment of Manual Scavenging and Construction of Dry Laterines (Prohibition) Act, a practice prevalent across India even today. According to the Socio Economic and Caste Census of 2011, 1.8 lakh households are still dependent on manual scavenging.
In 2013, the Prohibition of Employment of Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation Act included workers who clean septic tanks and railway tracks under the definition of manual scavengers. Sewer workers were added the following year by the Supreme Court, further ordering a compensation of Rs 10 lakh for the family of a deceased worker. Time and again, the definitions and proposed remedies have been altered, but on ground, there hasn’t been any noticeable change.
A study conducted by Rashtriya Garima Abhiyan identified a total of 140 incidents and 302 deaths between 1992 and 2018. As part of their research, they studied 51 of these incidents in which 97 deaths were reported and found that compensation had been awarded only in 31 per cent of the cases. No prosecution had taken place either.
A reaction to the Union Budget issued by Bezwada Wilson, national convenor of the Safai Karmachari Andolan, who works for the welfare of sanitation workers reads, “Budget says nothing about liberation, rehabilitation, and welfare of safai karmacharis, nor there is any allocation for this purpose. Thus, budget has nothing to offer those who have been forced to most undignified profession like scavenging for generations just because of their caste.”
The statement adds, “There are no measures taken in the Budget to reduce the economic inequality or eradication of untouchability. It is just a mechanical budget devoid of any humane approach.”
Dr Bindeshwar Pathak, founder of Sulabh International Social Service, has been working to address the issue for many years now. While assisting a correspondent, he first met a few women in 2003 who were into manual scavenging in Alwar.
“When I asked them why they were into manual scavenging, they said — yeh to aap gajab sawaal puchh rahe hai (that is a strange question!). It was their daily work, something that generations before them had been doing” Pathak says.
At the heart of the problem is India’s age-old caste system. Most engaged in the cleaning of dry toilets, sewers and septic tanks belong to the Dalit community. Pathak quotes Mahatma Gandhi, who once said, “Indians are ready to face the bullets of the British, but are unable to eat with untouchables.”
“So, we started to get rid of dry latrines and designed a two-pit flush toilet. At the same time, we started vocational training and educational programmes for these women who were employed in manual scavenging. And then we worked on social integration — whether by helping them gain access to the local temple or opening bank accounts for their salary, which in turn would allow them to make contact with the outside world,” Pathak says.
“We’ve provided the model and the idea is to replicate it in other parts of the country,” he says.
Pathak informs that Sulabh International started with 28 women in its first batch and has so far worked with 400 women from Tonk and 200 from Alwar, a number of who have managed to find new livelihoods. Besides, they have managed to change mindsets in these towns when it comes to the caste system.
To provide alternatives, the government, too, has offered rehab policies for these workers as part of the self-employment scheme for Rehabilitation of Manual Scavengers (SRMS). But according to Rashtriya Garima Abhiyan’s survey, none of the families they met, who had lost a member while cleaning a septic tank or sewer, received their rights under the SRMS scheme. Besides, not a single family was rehabilitated in an alternative job.
“What the government fails to recognise is that very few from this community have leadership qualities. They aren’t very educated either. So they need someone to guide them, if there’s an attempt to get them out of this cycle,” Pathak says.
A few years ago, Olwe experienced a contrasting story when he travelled to parts of Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh to document the stories of manual scavengers. He met a few families who were looking to quit the practice, but found it hard to find alternate livelihoods.
“If they start a shop, nobody would buy from them. It’s a lot based on caste, which makes it very difficult to leave this line of work and start something new,” Olwe says.
Mechanised alternatives have been implemented by a few municipalities across the country. But 100 per cent mechanisation has still not been possible due to various reasons.
“The machines currently being used have their limitations. For instance, sucking machines can be used as a temporary solution for sewers. But someone will still have to enter it to do the cleaning and unblocking. So these machines are unable to do all the work that a human being does,” says Vimal Govind MK, CEO and product architect at Genrobotics Innovations.
Starting out from college, the start-up from Kerala initially intended to work in the field of robotics and healthcare. But after hearing of an accident related to manual scavenging, not too far from their campus, they decided to address the situation using technology.
“We can send a machine to Mars and control it from Earth, but we still have people entering manholes, a few metres below the ground. I felt like this was an engineering problem and when we did our research, we realised there was no proper tool for it,” Govind says.
The team connected with sewage workers to understand the problems that they were facing. The idea was to create a robot that could replicate every human movement when inside a manhole. They started working on the first prototype of Bandicoot in 2016 and two years later, launched their pilot project in Thiruvananthapuram.
So far, they have carried out over 300 such implementations across 18 states. The cost of the Bandicoot varies from Rs 32-40 lakh, which Govind informs, is far cheaper than what existing machines cost. Besides, they have also worked with 3,000-odd sewage workers and trained them to become operators for these robots.
“These are people who have been doing this job for centuries. While talking to them, we realised that they were scared of losing their jobs once the robot was put to work. Most are not educated, so we’ve built tutorial applications using simple graphical representation that can teach them how to operate the Bandicoot. This will help train workers pan India, since communication is often a barrier,” Govind says.
The COVID-19 pandemic halted Genrobotics’ progress momentarily. But there’s a lot in store for them this year. And perhaps a sign of things to come in the time ahead.
“Kerala is going to become the first state which will be implementing 100 percent robotic scavenging. We have completed our installation in sewage systems across the state and are awaiting the official launch. I think it’s definitely possible across the country,” Govind says.
However, folks like Olwe, who have seen the problem up-close for many years now, believe that the solution needs to go beyond the purview of just mechanisation.
“The problem is as much about social science as it is about engineering. So a lot of things have to work together — technology, rehabilitation of the workers, overhauling the garbage system according to the needs of growing cities, and educating people on garbage segregation. And, of course, addressing the caste system. Equality needs to come in for anything to change,” Olwe says.
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