MANUAL SCAVENGERS AND THEIR UNENDING CONFLICT WITH LAW

Abstract

I may not be born again and if it happens, I will like to be born in a family of scavengers so that I may relieve them of unhealthy, inhuman and unhealthy practice of carrying head loads of night-soil’. These are the words of Mahatma Gandhi as he expressed his plight about the practice of manual scavenging in India. Manual scavengers, considered to be wretched and untouchable face the greatest form of untouchability that exists. Their daily living is based on one of the most demeaning activity- cleaning faeces from public and dry latrines. Manual scavenging is the degrading and illegal task of cleaning human excrement from India’s roads and dry latrines. Using little more than a broom, a tin plate, and a basket, scavengers are made to clear feces from public and private latrines as well as carry them to dumping grounds/ disposal sites. Manual scavengers are usually from caste groups customarily relegated to the bottom of the caste hierarchy and confined to livelihood tasks viewed as deplorable or deemed too menial by higher caste groups
Despite the technological advancements and developments which could have tackled the problem of manual scavenging and the safe disposal of human excreta, manual scavenging continues to exist in India, and with it, the deplorable deaths.
Manual Scavenging is not only a blatant violation of human rights but also a disgrace to human dignity and humanity at large.

It’s a practice deeply rooted in the Indian case system and is performed exclusively by the lower case Dalits even after five years of the enactment of the Prohibition of Employment of Manual Scavengers and Their Rehabilitation Act, 2013 which states that it is the ‘duty of local authorities and other agencies to use modern technology for cleaning of sewers’ but this issue still fails to grab the attention of the Central Government.