Ramesh Kumar inspects the manhole brimming with filth and soot. He talks in whisper to his friend Suresh, closes his eyes and folds his hands in prayer as he gets ready to enter the manhole.
“I am not sure whether I will come out of the manhole alive or not. Thus, this short prayer,” Ramesh says as a smile floats his face.
Suresh pats his friend’s back as Ramesh enters the manhole to clear a blockage which has turned the area around the manhole into a cesspool.
Ramesh is one of the hundreds of thousands of manual scavengers spread across India who clean septic tanks, gutters and sewer. The job is not only tedious but life threatening. Fatalities are very common. Ramesh and his peer know this. Therefore, every time a scavenger enters a manhole he offers a small prayer for his safety because the contractor, who is supposed to give them safety kits, has denied them the basic equipment like masks, gloves and gas concentration detectors to cut the cost.
“We work with our bare hands and cover our mouth and nose with gamchha (scarf) to save ourselves from the poisonous gases,” said Kallu, another person present there to assist Ramesh at the time of emergency.
“Our life has no value Babuji (sir). This contractor knows that one can die while cleaning the manhole but who cares. The contractor wants to get the work done at the earliest. So, he coaxes and cajoles us to enter the gutter without any safety kit. If we die what will he lose – nothing,” said Suresh Valmiki.
RISE IN DEATH TOLL
The number of deaths while cleaning sewers, manholes and septic tanks has increased over the last few years. The year 2019 saw the maximum number of deaths in the past five years. The officials claim that 110 workers were killed while cleaning sewer lines and septic tanks across India. In 2018, the number of fatalities was 68 — thus in one year there was 61 per cent increase in these deaths.
This is more nauseating because the number of deaths have increased despite the Union government enacting a law for the protection of scavengers in 2013. The Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation Act has put to end the practice of any form of manual cleaning, carrying, disposing of or handling of human waste.
Talk about the law and government rules, and Suresh gives a hearty laugh. “What law and kanoon you are talking about, sir. We are working in broad daylight in front of hundreds of people and no one says it is illegal. A government contractor has given us the assignment to clean the sewer line. In other words, this is government work that we are doing. And around 100 metres from here there is a police station. Have you seen police coming here asking us not to enter the manhole because it is illegal?” Suresh Valmiki asks, pointing in the direction of the police station.
“When someone dies while cleaning the sewer, the government officials, contractors and people like you will talk about law and precautions one should take. Then you will hit us with the rule book. Otherwise, we are gripped with sab chalta hai syndrome,” Valmiki, who is also office-bearer of Uttar Pradesh Safai Karmachari Sangh, said.
On August 22 last year, five safai workers had died after inhaling poisonous gases inside an under-construction manhole at Krishna Kunj Colony in Ghaziabad.
Pradeep Chauhan, state general secretary of UP Rajya Safai Karmachari Sangh, said that the government did not give compensation because they were contractual workers.
“The death shatters the whole family because the bread winner dies in the gutter in an attempt to clean it so that others can have a decent life,” he said.
The Government of India has carried out a national survey in 18 states, according to which there were a total of 48,345 manual scavengers working till January 31, 2020. Of this, 29,923 are engaged in manual scavenging in Uttar Pradesh, making it the largest number in any state in India.
CASTE DIVIDE
As more than 50 per cent of the manual scavengers across India are engaged in Uttar Pradesh, one of the most impoverished states of India, the practice is driven by caste, class and income divides. The people who do this work are Dalits. There are many instances in which women and men from the Valmiki caste (the lowest caste in caste hierarchy) are engaged by urban municipal corporations, both directly and through contractors, to manually clean excrement.
This is no secret that lower caste people are engaged by the authorities to do scavenging work. Ramesh, Suresh, Kallu and their like belong to lower caste and they do not hide this fact. “Do you expect man from upper caste will get down into the gutter to clean human excreta? He will never do it. From ages we (Dalits) are made to do this work and now everyone expects that only we will do it,” Suresh Valmiki said.
Kallu interjects to say that like a Brahmin (upper caste) is destined to be a priest of a temple, a Dalit is meant to be a scavenger (the man who clean human excreta).
These people have their own colony. In Lucknow, the manual scavengers can be found in Luv Kush Colony near Indira Nagar. These people do not have permanent job. They work as contractual workers and earn anything between Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 per day.
“We charge no less than Rs 1,000 to clean the sewer line. Sometimes we get more depending on the ‘seth’. Sometimes they even pay us Rs 2,000. We work in groups of two or three persons and we distribute the money among ourselves,” Suresh said.
They generally clean one to two manhole per day. But during rains this number can go up and they make good money during monsoon.
“We have family to support and need money. But who wants to work in this atmosphere. This is really nauseating. But we have no option as we do not know other work. People of our caste are born to clean the excreta of others and we are doing the same,” he said.
Ashif Shaikh, founder of Rashtriya Garima Abhiyan, a grassroots campaign against manual scavenging, says that manual scavenging is not an employment but an injustice akin to slavery. “It is one of the most prominent forms of discrimination against Dalits and it is central to the violation of their human rights,” he says.
The seriousness of the topic was broken by the a shout from gutter as Ramesh asked for help. The gutter had ankle-deep water and he was asking for some contraption to clear the blocked sewer line. A foul smell had filled the area. They called it sewer gas, which is a complex mixture of toxic and non-toxic gases.
These people are not educated but experience has taught them that these gases are present at varying levels, depending upon the source. They know that if there is a sharp smell of rotten egg they should come out because it is lethal.
The gas these workers are talking about is hydrogen sulphide which is soluble in water and becomes trapped in sewage matter. When the sewage is disturbed, the gas leaks out and causes nausea, delirium and convulsions, which can all imperil self-rescue. It is also a skin and eye irritant.
“We have got gamchha to fight this gas. But sometimes it is not enough,” said Ramesh, who came out of the gutter after it started emanating gas smelling like rotten egg.
GOVERNMENT INTERVENTION
On March 6, the Union government prepared a Rs 1.25 lakh crore National Action Plan to completely phase out manual scavenging and acquire hi-tech machines in 500 cities and major gram panchayats to clean sewer lines without any human interface.
The Group of Ministers headed by Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, who also happens to be Member of Parliament from Lucknow, finalised a National Action Plan. The plan being considered has two parts – rehabilitation of manual scavengers and completely phasing out the practice of physically entering sewer lines for cleaning them.