India must end manual scavenging, aid affected: HRW
August 26, 2014, 6:19 am

Manual scavengers from the Dalit community who refuse to clean human waste, face social pressure, including threats of violence and expulsion from their village, often with the support of local officials, said the report [Image: UN]

In a new report “Cleaning Human Waste” released on Monday, the HRW criticized the Indian government for extending the time limit for ending manual scavenging at least eight times as of July 2014.

The previous Congress government had brought in the Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and Their Rehabilitation Act, 2013 (the 2013 Act), committing to end manual scavenging.

“Recent examples from communities engaged in manual scavenging in the states of Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Rajasthan, and Uttar Pradesh highlight the failures of previous government attempts to end manual scavenging and eliminate the entrenched  attitudes and discriminatory practices that still bind members of affected communities to this degrading and unnecessary occupation,” said the HRW report on Monday.

Across much of India, consistent with centuries-old feudal and caste-based custom, women from communities that traditionally worked as “manual scavengers,” still collect human waste on a daily basis, load it into cane baskets or metal troughs, and carry it away on their heads for disposal at the outskirts of the settlement.

The HRW report on Monday praises Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi of the Hindu rightwing party Bharatiya Janata Party for his election speeches during which he vowed to put building toilets ahead of building temples but said he has to also extend aid and rehabilitation to manual scavengers.

“Investment in sanitation alone is far from sufficient to end the social and economic exclusion faced by these communities. The government’s continued inability to provide individuals the support necessary to leave manual scavenging predictably will undermine the renewed government effort to promote modern sanitation,” says the report.

Manual scavengers from the Dalit community, the most marginalized, so-called untouchable castes , who refuse to clean human waste, face social pressure, including threats of violence and expulsion from their village, often with the support of local officials, said the report.

India’s Constitution bans the practice of caste-based discrimination or untouchability, and the Protection of Civil Rights Act, 1955, prohibits compelling anyone to practice manual scavenging.

In March 2014, the Supreme Court of India estimated that there are 9.6 million dry latrines that are still being cleaned manually by men and women from India’s lower castes.

HRW conducted research for the report between November 2013 and July 2014.

TBP