Even as the Union government claims that manual scavenging is not a caste-based occupation, it has been reported that close to 92% of the Sewer and Septic Tank Workers (SSWs) profiled by the Social Justice Ministry belong to the Scheduled Caste (SC), Scheduled Tribe (ST), or Other Backward Class (OBC) communities. The Ministry has been profiling SSWs as part of its National Action for Mechanised Sanitation Ecosystem (NAMASTE) programme, formulated “to stop SSW deaths and to promote mechanisation of cleaning operations with a vision to reduce hazardous cleaning and ensure the safety of sanitation workers.” An exclusive report published by The Hindu says that an analysis of this yet-to-be-published profiling data points towards a high consolidation of Dalit workers in the profession.
One of the components of NAMASTE is the profiling of sewer entry professionals/septic tank workers. In its report published on September 29, The Hindu stated that of the 38,000 workers profiled so far, 68.9% belong to the SC community, 14.7% to the OBC community, 8.3% to the ST community. 8% are from the general category. Put together, this indicates that 77.2% of the workers are from Dalit communities.
The Indian government, however, not only denies that it is a caste-based occupation but also claims that there is no manual scavenging in India. This was the government’s stand in 2023 as well. TNM had earlier reported on this, highlighting that the Safai Karamchari Andolan (SKA)— a movement working towards the eradication of manual scavenging in the country—recorded 339 deaths of manual scavengers in 2022-23.
Bezwada Wilson, the national convener of the SKA asks how the government can make such a claim. “Our groundwork clearly shows that the majority of manual scavenging workers are Dalits and it is a caste-based occupation. How can the government say it is not?” he told TNM.
The government has not deviated from its stand this year as well. In his two responses about manual scavenging in the Parliament, Social Justice and Empowerment Minister Ramdas Athawale said on July 24, 2024, that there was no report of the existence of manual scavenging in India.
However, there are discrepancies between the government’s stands on the issue that were tabled in Parliament.
Inconsistent stands on the issue
In its first reply to Rajya Sabha MP Saket Gokhale, the government said that there is “no report of the practice of manual scavenging in the country in the last five years.” In the second reply to Rajya Sabha MP Anil Kumar Yadav Mandadi, the ministry says there is “no report of the practice of manual scavenging in any districts.”
He also added that the Social Justice Ministry had launched a mobile app called "Swachhata Abhiyaan" in December 2020 to capture existing data on insanitary latrines and manual scavengers associated with them. While stating that a total of 6,256 cases were uploaded on the mobile application from 114 districts, the Ministry claimed that all of them were verified and none were “found to be credible.”
However, a couple of weeks later, on August 6, 2024, in its reply to Lok Sabha MP Shashi Tharoor, the Ministry stated that as of July 31, 2024, only 732 out of 766 districts in India have reported themselves as manual scavenging-free.
On the same day, in its reply to Lok Sabha MP Hibi Eden, the Ministry claimed that the reports sent by States/UTs do not mention the caste details of workers in the sanitation and cleaning sectors. On August 7, in its reply to Rajya Sabha MP Sanjay Singh, the Ministry stated that manual scavengers are an occupation-based identification rather than a caste-based identification.
Manual scavenging vs hazardous cleaning
The Union government has maintained that 377 deaths have occurred in the last five years (2019-2023) due to hazardous cleaning of sewers and septic tanks. It is to be noted that though cleaning sewers and septic tanks technically falls under the category of manual scavenging, the narrow definition of the practice in The Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation Act, 2013 prevents it from being officially identified as such.
When MP Shashi Tharoor asked to differentiate between manual scavenging and hazardous cleaning, the Ministry pointed to its definition in the Act. Section 2(d) of the Act defines ‘hazardous cleaning’ of a sewer or septic tank as “manual cleaning” by a worker without the employer providing them with protective gear, other cleaning devices, and without following safety precautions. Section 2(g) of the Act defines “manual scavenger” as a person who manually cleans, carries, disposes of, or handles human excreta in any manner in an insanitary latrine or in an open drain or a pit into which the human excreta from the insanitary latrines is disposed of, or on a railway track or other such spaces or premises. This does not include a sewer or a septic tank.
The Supreme Court, in a 2023 judgement, considered this point and said that hazardous cleaning is permitted if protective gear and cleaning devices are provided. “Even though both a hazardous cleaner and a manual scavenger deal with human excreta, the statute only penalises hazardous cleaning and does not provide subsequent steps for rehabilitation of hazardous cleaners,” the court observed.
While the Ministry for Social Justice claimed that there is no manual scavenging in India currently, two surveys conducted in 2013 and 2018 identified 58,098 ‘erstwhile manual scavengers’. According to the data on the southern states, Karnataka had the highest number of erstwhile scavengers - 2,927; followed by Andhra Pradesh - 1,793; Kerala - 518 and Tamil Nadu - 398.
Read TNM’s award-winning series ‘Exposing Manual Scavenging’ here.
