Manual scavenging is the most obnoxious and inhuman practice violating the dignity and human personhood of safai karmacharis. It involves the engagement or employment of sections of people to manually dispose human excreta from dry latrines with bare minimum aids such as scrappers, brooms and baskets.
Manual scavenging is integrally linked with caste system and is imposed on certain dalit sub-caste groups particularly on their women. As a result all persons engaged in manual scavenging are dalits, and of them 82% are women.
Manual scavenging continues to persist even today after it has been banned 17 years ago through the 'Employment of Manual Scavengers and Construction of Dry Latrines (Prohibition) Act 1993. A major reason for its continuance is the attitude of state local body authorities towards the condition and plight of safai karmacharis. They seem to tacitly agree with the casteist ideology that assigns unclean occupations to dalits and hence have totally ignored the 1993 Act. At the same time they justify their inaction alleging that the safai karmacharis are quite content doing manual scavenging.
Safai Karmachari Andolan
Safai Karamchari Andolan, is totally opposed to the casteist ideology. It is a national campaign movement of safai karmacharis committed to liberate all safai karamcharis from manual scavenging and restore their dignity and person hood.
Since 1996, we the safai karmacharis are engaged in a protracted struggle to eradicate manual scavenging and liberate all safai karmacharis. We have been employing different strategies in our campaign - taking surveys to identify dry latrines, users and those forced into manual scavenging, filing petitions and complaints with government officials at different levels, educating and sensitising the civil society and dry latrine users, filing of public interest litigation in the supreme court and networking with individuals, media and civil society organisations to form solidarity and pressure groups. Safai Karamchari Andolan has substantial evidence in 18 states of India of the prevalence of manual scavenging.
We filed the PIL in Supreme Court in 2003 along with 18 other organizations and individuals in which we named the state governments, Central government ministries and departments as respondents. So far there have been 21 hearings. There has been a noticeable pattern to state official responses. First, a total denial of any existence of manual scavenging in their respective jurisdictions, next partial admission, when we produced sample photographic evidence and finally, claiming complete compliance by dubiously destroying only those places which we presented as samples. In some cases, they even misinterpreted the Act to intimidate and threaten safai karmacharis. The state local body officials have never used the provisions of the Act to take legal action against the owners of dry latrines.
Such responses by state bodies and the Apex Court’s order prompted us to undertake an extensive sample survey which is essentially the Government responsibility. We have conducted the survey in 274 districts of 18 states and have documented 7065 cases of persons engaged in manual scavenging.
The survey process has added to the numerical strength of the SKA movement with Community Resource Persons (CRPs) and volunteer enumerators and a host of other community members dedicating themselves and pledging eliminate manual scavenging in their respective districts and states.
All in all our campaign over the last few years has built up tremendous pressure on the government to implement the 'Employment of Manual Scavengers and Construction of Dry Latrines (Prohibition) Act 1993’. It has opened a vision of a manual scavenging free India. And since 2007 SKA is engaged in an intensive strategic programme called ‘Action-2010’ to eradicate manual scavenging completely from India by December 2010. Our national bus yatra is part of this intensive effort.
Samajik Parivarthan Yatra: For Eradication of Manual Scavenging
Today we are flagging off the historical ‘Samajik Parivarthan Yatra’. It is a strategic programme of Bus Yatra which starts from five different corners of India, will traverse through several districts in 20 states and finally culminate in New Delhi with a large rally.
The Bus Yatra begins on
30th September
from the following five points and culminates in Delhi on 29th October:
