‘Eradicating manual scavenging in India is possible in a year’
Bindeshwar Pathak, sociologist and founder of Sulabh International, feels eradicating manual scavenging is possible in a year. He feels those doing this job need an alternative and social elevation,
writes Gaurav Saigal. Does manual scavenging bill seeking to prohibit employment of individuals as manual scavengers hold a promise?
The law is good as it supports strict implementation in case persuasion fails. But removal of scavenging is not the work of law. In 1972, we had an ordinance, but no one noticed it. See, if you have a bucket toilet in your house and I convince you to make it a two-pit toilet and give you money for it, you will not wait for a law.
How much time do you need to eradicate this practice?
Eradicating manual scavenging in India is possible only in a year. It just needs a model based on social acceptability and rehabilitation. This is necessary, as when you ask someone to stop using a bucket toilet you need to build an alternate one for them. Also, when you remove someone from this practice, you need to get them social acceptability and another job to earn. And we have done this in Rajasthan. What has the government done to do away with manual scavenging?
As per the Government of India survey released along with census 2011, 67,000 people still earn a living as manual scavengers by cleaning nearly 7 lakh bucket latrines, while another 7 lakh toilets are cleaned by animal scavengers. Statistics show two lakh such toilets in Uttar Pradesh, in districts such as Gaziabad and a few in Lucknow too. I mean the government is busy playing with statistics and making plans for five or 10 years, while the job can be done in just a year. Why do you think your model is better?
Manual scavenging is more a matter of rehabilitation than of eradicating the practice. Our experiment in Alwar in Rajasthan
has
proved this . There we elevated the social status of manual scavengers by removing untouchability and getting them acceptability among higher classes also. Ambedkar once said that statutes could abolish slavery in America but untouchability in India needed social acceptability and I agree. There have been reports that people use toilets as storehouse?
The gover nment made toilets for those who did not need them. We provide toilets to those who need them and ensure they are used. Your model for getting railway tracks rid of human waste is pending with the railways.
We have suggested a feasible model in which whenever trains stop, containers be removed and put in an effluent treatment plant. But the government wants to spend years researching on green toilets. A few trains have been running with green toilets in south India for the past few months but they (researchers) have not concluded while our model is tried and effective too. Apart from eradicating manual scavanging, you have been working with widows of Vrindavan.
Yes. We are supporting them financially. But more than that, we are trying to teach them some sort of work so that they may live with dignity. Recently they played Holi, which was thought to be banned for widows.