Hyderabad: Triggering row, the Union Government claimed that no deaths were reported in the country due to manual scavenging during the last five years. Minister of Social Justice and Empowerment, Ramdas Athawale while responding to Congress MPs Mallikarjun Kharge and L Hanumanthaiah's questions in Parliament, came up with the claim that led to heated debates and he said that 66,692 people were engaged in manual scavenging.
Earlier also, Athawale made a similar remark by differentiating manual scavengers and safai karmacharis. During question hour in Lok Sabha in February 2020, he said "the National Commission for Safai Karamcharis has received reports regarding the death of persons while cleaning sewers and septic tanks." The deaths due to surface scavenging were ousted from the category.
Meanwhile, the Union Minister's claim and analysis of national survey data brought glaring contradictions to the light. A national survey conducted across 18 states identified a total of 48,345 manual scavengers till January 31, 2020.
| State | No Of Manual Scavengers |
| Andhra Pradesh | 1982 |
| Assam | 2988 |
| Bihar | 0 |
| Chhattisgarh | 0 |
| Gujarat | 108 |
| Jharkhand | 281 |
| Jammu and Kashmir | 0 |
| Karnataka | 1912 |
| Kerala | 600 |
| Madhya Pradesh | 524 |
| Maharashtra | 7378 |
| Odisha | 0 |
| Punjab | 142 |
| Rajasthan | 2534 |
| Tamil Nadu | 62 |
| Uttar Pradesh | 23070 |
| Uttarakhand | 6033 |
| West Bengal | 637 |
| Total | 48251 |
Number of manual scavengers deaths
A total of 631 people have died in the country while cleaning sewers and septic tanks in the last 10 years, the National Commission for Safai Karamcharis (NCSK) said. The figure was provided by the NCSK in response to an RTI query on the number of deaths reported while cleaning sewers and septic tanks from 2010 to March 2020.
Deaths due to sewer cleaning across India
| Year | Total deaths of manual scavengers |
| 2019 | 115 |
| 2018 | 73 |
| 2017 | 93 |
| 2016 | 55 |
| 2015 | 62 |
| 2014 | 52 |
| 2013 | 68 |
| 2012 | 47 |
| 2011 | 37 |
| 2010 | 27 |
Struggle of over lakh of people to make both ends meet
Even though banned by law, over 1.8 lakh families' main occupation is manual scavenging as per Population Census 2011. As per the data collated by Safai Karamchari Andolan, about 1,760 people have died from manual scavenging in the past 20 years. SKA’s estimates show that over 7.7 lakh workers have been sent into sewers since 1993 with complete knowledge and awareness of the dire consequences. The plight of the nation is so worse that people are employed in nearly 26 lakh dry latrines across the country.
Tracing back the polices to end manual scavenging
- In 1955, the Protection of Civil Rights Act called for the abolition of scavenging or sweeping on grounds of untouchability. This was revised in 1977 for a stricter implementation.
- The centrally sponsored scheme of low cost sanitation for Liberation of Scavengers (ILCS) began from 1980-81 for the conversion of dry toilets into pit toilets through an integrated low-cost sanitation scheme.
- It took the government almost eight years to set up a National Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes Finance and Development Corporation (NSCSTFDC), and several more years for the body — now known as National Scheduled Castes Finance and Development Corporation (NSFDC) — to become an integrated platform to provide financial aid to manual scavengers.
- In 1989, the Prevention of Atrocities Act became an integrated guard for sanitation workers; more than 90 per cent people employed as manual scavengers belonged to Scheduled Caste. The Act became pertinent in liberating manual scavengers from the clutches of their job.
- The provisions of constitutional validity to municipal governance in India and categorisation of urban local bodies through the 74th Amendment Act, 1992, made India’s sanitation structure more concrete. It was only in 1993, through The Employment of Manual Scavengers and Construction of Dry Latrines (Prohibition) Act, that a stricter stance was taken against employing manual scavengers. However, the Act had its limitations.
- In 1994, the newly constituted National Commission for Safai Karamcharis (NCSK), a statutory body as per the National Commission for Safai Karamcharis Act, 1993, was established. In 2000, NCSK submitted its first report stating that implementation of the 1993 Act is far fetched. Since then, various organisations such as the Safai Karmachari Andolan (SKA) and National Campaign on Dalit Human Rights (NCDHR) have been working to eradicate manual scavenging. The practice, however, continues because of loopholes in implementation of these laws.
- In 2002, the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment came up with a report stating that over 79 million people were engaged in this practice.
- In 2003, the Comptroller Auditor General’s report on the evaluation of the ‘National Scheme for Liberation and Rehabilitation of Scavengers and their Dependents’ stated that the 1993 Act “has failed to achieve its objectives even after 10 years of implementation involving investment of more than Rs. 600 crores”. This was taken up by SKA along with other organisations and they filed a writ petition seeking strict enforcement of the implementation of the 1993 Act.
- In 2007, the NHRC called for a national coordination for adoption of the Act to all the states of India. In the next 10 years, several assessments by the government and civil society organisations for the quantitative establishment of manual scavengers took place.
- The Pandya Committee (1968) was the “inspectorate of the enforcement machinery with regards to existing regulations.”
- Parliament had enacted the Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation Act, 2013 which came into force from December 6, 2013.
Also read: Centre says no death due to manual scavenging, activists fume
