Manual scavenging refers to the practice of manually cleaning, carrying, disposing human excreta from dry latrines, septic tanks and sewers. It often involves using the most basic tools such as buckets, brooms and baskets. Although underreported, this is one of the biggest issues that points to the existence of caste discrimination in Indian society
The archaic practice still results in multiple unwarranted deaths across the country. The ‘profession’ is one of the most unsafe ways to make a living across the world. Supreme Court, on September 18, 2019, said about manual scavenging, “In no country, people are sent to gas chambers to die. Every month four to five persons are losing their lives in manual scavenging”, equating sewers to gas chambers. As the scavengers enter the narrow, deep septic tanks or sewers, which are filled with poisonous gases, without any protective gear, it is often the case that they end up getting trapped and suffocate to death in human excreta.
More than half a million people are employed at present in this profession even after it was banned by the Indian government in 1993. The ban was further reinforced with the Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation Act, 2013, but with little effect as the illegal occupation still results in hundreds of deaths each year. Many NGOs and help groups work for the betterment and rehabilitation of the scavengers. A prominent figure amongst them is Bezwada Wilson and his Safai Karamchari Andolan. We spoke with him regarding the issue. The Magsaysay awardee believes that if the government diligently works towards ending this malpractice, it can be eradicated.
He believes that the divide in Indian society still hurts our country as a large section of the population is employed in the profession of scavenging works in inhumane condition. “Scavenging clearly violates Article 21 of the Indian Constitution which gives every citizen a right to live with human dignity and decency”, Wilson said. As the malpractice is prevalent in India for a long time, we asked him about the ‘profession’ in modern India. “Manual scavenging is still going on strongly, so much so that the deaths in a septic tank are reported regularly. The malpractice is only brought to light when deaths are reported which is a classic discrepancy in Indian psyche. We should focus more on the eradication of the profession as a whole. Cases are registered where people jump in manholes without proper gear. The fact that even women are employed like this is disturbing”, he said. Scavenging is more common in rural India as adequate sewerage systems are not available.
Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, the government’s flagship program encouraging sanitation across the country and making India open defecation free, saw the installation of millions of toilets across India. This could lead to an increase in demand for manual scavengers as highlighted by “Health, Safety and Dignity of Sanitation Workers: An Initial Assessment”, a 2019 report published by the World Health Organisation, International Labour Organization, the World Bank and WaterAid.”The concerns around sanitation work seem to be growing, given the large number of toilets that have been constructed under the ongoing Swachh Bharat Mission, using technologies that would require periodic emptying and offsite treatment of faecal matter,” the report says. Wilson was also critical of the sanitation program from the perspective of manual scavenging. “The main problem here is toilets have been constructed yet effective sewage disposal system has not been developed. The problem of open defecation is far more prevalent in rural areas than urban areas. Same is the case for manual scavenging. Proper sewerage system must be implemented at grass root level for effective implementation of Swachh Bharat. Septic tanks have been installed in the new toilets instead of proper drainage. Earlier septic tank deaths were majorly reported in cities. Now, slowly, similar cases would be reported from villages as well.”
The activist’s approach towards eradicating scavenging was very well planned, “We need to identify the number of people who are employed in this in order to think of rehabilitation. First, we need to mechanise the sewage cleaning system in India. This will allow us to identify the total number of people employed in various types of scavenging by conducting surveys. After that, you can provide these people involved with an alternate livelihood.”
While we work towards rehabilitating the scavengers, it is also essential to figure out a sustainable way for sewage cleaning. This has been identified by many young entrepreneurs who are working on developing technologies that take out human involvement from the process. “The higher authorities need to get behind small scale technologies like Bandicoot and Sewer croc which are working in this area and make them effective at a Pan-India scale,” Wilson said. In order to understand how successful such new technologies have been, we spoke with Afsal Muttikal, CMO at Genrobotics, the startup behind Bandicoot. “The idea of Bandicoot came to us in our college days after we found out that someone we knew died after getting trapped in a manhole. Being robotics engineers, we developed a prototype Bandicoot which is a semi-robotic device with a human-controlled interface to clean manholes,” he said.
“We implemented our prototype in Kerala. After that, we have expanded to 7 states till now,” he added. “Bandicoot is solving the manhole cleaning issue by taking out the human element from the actual cleaning process. The machine enters into the manhole, collects sludge and disposes it off outside, eliminating hazard to human life,” Afsal asserted.
Regarding the success of the robot, the CMO said, “Last year, it was implemented in different municipal corporations in Andhra, Kerala and Haryana. Our model also incorporates rehabilitation of the manual scavengers by employing them as robotic operators as the user interface is easily programmed so that anyone can operate it. These manual scavengers are already familiar with the sewer drains and hence they can clean the drains virtually without putting their lives in danger as the machine takes care of the risky part.”
The robot is coupled with a tracking device that predicts any future blockages in the drain. “G-beetle detects blockage in the drains beforehand via tracking the flow parameters and alerts the authorities before the case of blockage.”
The only issue with Bandicoot is that it is quite expensive at Rs. 32 lakhs. However, Afsal said, “Right now, we make the robots on our own but we have signed an agreement with Tata to develop a batch of bandicoot making it available across India.”
Bandicoot has brought forth changes. Afsal said that a 22-year-old died cleaning a septic tank in Kerala. Following that, the local authorities contacted them and procured a Bandicoot to prevent such a mishap in the future. Such encouraging signs have come from various other parts of India as well.