Those who clean sewers in India continue to die despite the laws
So far this year, 75 people have fallen victim to the deplorable working conditions
Sewer workers strip down to their underwear rather than wear protective gear and spend their days deep in human muck.
Chandra Kanta
NEW DELHI shudders when she thinks about how she will explain her son’s death someday to her 6month-old granddaughter.
Mohanlal Kanta, 22, died from asphyxiation in August while cleaning a blocked sewer line without a gas mask or other protective gear, as required by laws rarely enforced.
“The police came to our house with Mohanlal’s photo and said there had been an accident,” Kanta said, holding her granddaughter on her lap. “They didn’t mention anything about criminal charges against his employer for letting him work in violation of safety rules.”
Mohanlal Kanta is the latest victim of widely flouted laws that have led to at least 750 deaths across India since “manual scavenging” was outlawed in 1993, including 75 this year. The large human toll casts a light on the deplorable working conditions here — even in the capital.
In 2013, the Indian government increased penalties up to $7,700 in fines and five years in prison for employers who let their workers clean human solid waste by hand or build latrines that require manual maintenance.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government has launched a massive Clean India campaign that has built more than 80 million latrines to improve public health by discouraging Indians from relieving themselves in the open.
But the plight of sewer and latrine cleaners remains largely unchanged, said activist Bewazda Wilson of the non-profit Sanitation Workers Movement.
“In Delhi within the last one and a half months, we have witnessed more than 16 sewer deaths,” said Wilson, 51. “You don’t think this is a big problem? How can my democracy just keep quiet?”
Indian sewer workers, usually stripped down to their underwear rather than outfitted in protective gear, go down manholes and often spend their days neck deep in human muck using brooms, scrapers and buckets to clean blockages.
Their menial occupations reflect their low status in the Hindu caste system. For millennia, cleaning latrines has been the job of the lowest castes, most prominently the Dalits or “untouchables.” India’s 1949 constitution prohibited explicit discrimination against the untouchables. But social and economic norms have kept them in the dirtiest jobs.
Wilson said unconfirmed reports put the actual death toll far higher than the official count. Yet no one has been convicted of violating the law against manual cleaning in the 24 years it has been on the books, he said.
“We have given the (Delhi) chief minister details of 54 death cases,” Wilson said. “He must arrest these people.”
Kanta’s death was among a spate of similar fatalities that prompted police to file a case against his employer. The Delhi government offered his wife a government job and provided his family with compensation of about $15,000.
But it’s an open secret that government agencies — in this case the Delhi Water Board — regularly employ contractors knowing they send people into sewers to clean illegally, Wilson said.
Modi’s government aims to build 210 million latrines by 2019. But the government has not improved sewage systems at the same pace. Even before the project began, only a third of urban toilets were connected to sewer lines. Many of them dump directly into rivers and canals.
“Urban India is already floating on sludge,” said Mamata Dash of WaterAid India, an aid organization with offices across India. “The problem has only increased many fold.”