It is evident that a large majority of people from a particular community are engaged in manual scavenging or sanitary work. They are called sanitary workers, Safai Karmacharies, Mehentaras, Beheras, sweepers and their habitations are known as Harijan Sahi and Mehentar Basti and slums in urban areas.
They are enlisted as Scheduled Caste (SC) and identified as most vulnerable community among the SCs. They face practices of untouchability in every sphere of life for their social identity and occupation. Historically, it is linked to caste system and forced caste based occupation. Women are engaged in a large number with this occupation.
The Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation Act-2013 defines manual scavengers as manually cleaning, carrying, disposing of, or otherwise handling in any manner, human excreta in an insanitary latrine or in an open drain or pit into which the human excreta from the insanitary latrines is disposed of, or on a railway track or in such other spaces or premises. Manual scavenging is violation of right to human dignity.
They clean toilets, clogged drains by entering the manholes, streets, roads, de-silt the drains and collect garbage and waste. In spite of modernisation, still this particular community is being engaged in large number with this occupation which is not respected in our society.
All our hospitals are maintained by them, office and educational institutions, municipalities and Rogi Kalyana Samitis in villages engage them as contract labour or wage labour. They also do seasonal additional work like drum beating, bamboo work, and disposal of dead animals, carcass, leather work, shoe making and menial jobs which are never recognised as a respectful occupation in our caste ridden society.
They work in most hazardous environment without protective equipment and devices like mask, globes and boots etc. Many of them die in road side manholes, soak pits, waste pits while cleaning them. These deaths or accidents have gone unrecorded.
They are prone to TB, skin diseases and water borne diseases due to long time exposure to dust, humane waste and unhygienic places.
Usually they get very less wage and are engaged in work from early morning to mid day without break and holidays because the work itself demand more time and is unavoidable. The caste people in their locality hesitate to employ scavengers as cook or domestic help because of their caste identity and occupation.
liquor and all kinds of addiction are affecting these people. Caste mindset, illiteracy and low wage together have made their life deplorable. A very insignificant few of them have come up due to reservation in education and jobs but a vast majority of people are still systematically engaged without a way out. The scavenger community in rural areas is engaged in seasonal jobs and many of them have been working as agricultural workers and migrating due to unemployment and social discrimination and atrocities in villages.
They have been always pushed to the outskirts of the cities and displaced again and again in the name of beautification and expansion. Tanlasahi in Tulasipur and Jayamangala Basti in Cuttack where hundreds of manual scavenges are living were forcefully evicted by the Cuttack Municipal Corporation without rehabilitation. Even the land given to them by the Government at CDA was taken back. The Choudwar municipality sweeper colony, Kapileswar Basti having 106 families, was deprived of getting homestead land.
All municipalities have scavengers but they do not have homestead land for the underpriviledged class. They still live on Government land, railway land and town outskirts. They are not organized as workers by trade unions barring in a few places. In many places, there has been no attempt to organize these sections of workers for their rights.
The privatisation of sanitary work in municipalities has further reduced their status from Government employee to casual workers by minimizing all kinds of State sponsored benefits. The socio-economic condition of the scavengers in Cuttack, Kendrapada, Puri, Ganjam, Brahmapur, Sambalpur and in many small towns is wretched.
The Constitution of India prohibits the practices of untouchability and caste based occupations. The National Commission for Safai Karmachari Act 1993 paves way to set up a National Commission for Safai Karmacharies and adopted The Employment of Manual Scavengers and Construction of Dry latrines Prohibition Act, 1993 came into force in 1997 and was adopted by the Government of Odisha. It prohibits use of dry latrine and provides imprisonment and fine but during last 19 years of its existence, not a single conviction has taken place.
The National Safai Karmachari Finance and Development Corporation under the Union Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment was set up in 1997 as a company not for profit with a share capital of Rs600 crore for the rehabilitation of manual scavengers in partnership with the States. The Odisha SC and ST Development Finance Cooperative Corporation limited established in 1979 under the administrative control of the State SC and ST development department has been in operation for the last 33 years and is the nodal agency for the rehabilitation of the manual scavengers.
It is unfortunate that the State Government has been denying through affidavit in Supreme Court about the non prevalence of manual scavenging which contradicts the Census data of 2011 and thereby taking no interest in the rehabilitation of the scavengers. The State department has no proactive role in coordination with NSCFDC for development of scavengers in Odisha. There are scavengers in 103 urban local bodies which include three municipal corporations, 37 municipalities and 63 notified area councils (NAC).
All the urban local bodies have employed scavengers in contractual appointment. The scavengers in slums are not being rehabilitated with land, house and dignified livelihood in spite of budgetary provision like SCSP and programmes like IHSDP, BSUP, RAY, NUlM, SJSRY, STEP UP etc by the Ministry of Urban Employment and Poverty Alleviation.
The national scheme for liberation and rehabilitation of scavengers provides alternate dignified occupations with training and financial assistance from subsidy, margin money, loan and bank loan. There is provision of scholarship for children of scavengers, sweepers, flayers and tanners. The national action plan for total eradication of manual scavengers by the planning commission has been implemented by the Ministry of Urban Employment and Poverty Alleviation.
Why still a large section of extreme poor and caste discriminated people are not being provided with basic minimum for life in spite of constitutional mandate, protective laws, budgetary provision, development programmes and institutional mechanismIJ It has been observed that there is very marginal implementation of laws and programmes for scavengers.
The political parties, trade unions, CSOs and reservation centric Dalit organizations in the State are paying very insignificant attention to the humanitarian issues and are not inclusive to specific socio-economic issues of common man and particularly the marginalized communities like scavengers.
The marginalised communities need to organise themselves with their organic leadership to fight for their rights to live a life with dignity.
(The writer is a rights activist, who can be contacted at ojaabbsr@gmail.com)