The
1948 United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of
the Crime of Genocide, to which India is a signatory, defines
genocide as "any of the following acts committed with intent to
destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious
group, as such: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily
or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on
the group conditions of life, calculated to bring about its physical
destruction in whole or in part."
{ Here is a report which brings out a real picture of SAFAI KARAMCHARIS, we can reach mars but fail to provide survival gear . There has been many deaths in Punjab too while bare body cleaning severages. Also see accompanied photo album } afdr edit
In the gutter
Catch
News
Bharat
Ratnas: the Clean India army every Indian must meet
|13
July 2015
The
inhumanity
About
21 million people live in Mumbai, generating 7,000 tonnes of daily
waste
The
city has 38,000 'conservancy workers', which is the innocuous term
for those employed in waste disposal
The
municipality engages 4,357 labourers to clean 54,600 manholes and
open sewage lines
Most
of these belong to the Mahar caste of Dalits
Across
India, there are 12 lakh manual scavengers.
Among
them, 9,600 deaths are reported each year
·
The
reaction
Photographer
Sudharak Olwe has published a photo book on their plight
Olwe
himself belongs to the Mahar caste, and wants to put the limelight
on the plight of the workers
It
was a 13 May 2014 article in the Mumbai Mirror that brought a
definitive change to Sudharak Olwe's life.
The
article, about five sewage workers, described what happened to them
when they got into a manhole, at Mumbai's Usha Nagar Culvert on the
Eastern Express Highway, to remove gunny bags from 35 feet under the
sewage pipeline:
"Sameer,
Rajesh and Dhaneshwar were the first to enter the chamber by means of
a rope. Ravindra and Panchonan, who followed them, came out citing
difficulty in breathing. After waiting for some time, site supervisor
Shivanand Chavan called in the cops. By the time the fire brigade
personnel entered the chamber, wearing gas masks, Sameer, Rajesh and
Dhaneshwar had died."
Olwe
was filled with repulsion. Repulsion for the words 'chamber',
'breathing difficulty' and worst of all 'conservancy workers' - the
term used for them, all of which reeked with a pungent odour of
legitimising what has got to be the shittiest job in the world.
Remember
that time when you stepped on a tiny bit of dog poo and grimaced,
running to the nearest tap to have it all washed up? The feeling of
that stuff touching even the sole of your shoe left you disgusted.
What
does it take to be bare naked and dive into a pit that is two storeys
deep and full of sewage waste? What does it feel like for the
stinking slush to be entering the pores of your skin, the parting
between your lips - no matter now tightly you keep them folded, from
entering your nostrils despite holding your breath and from seeping
into your tightly shut eyelids and feeling its warm stickiness settle
heavily on your hair, submerging you in the dark finality of its
hellish void?
Olwe
picked up his camera to find out.
A
caste fated to live in manholes
It
wasn't sympathy that moved Olwe. It was the more burning question of
identity. Belonging to the Mahar caste of Maharashtra, a sub-caste of
the Dalits just like Sameer, Rajesh and Dhaneshwar and Mumbai's
38,000 conservancy workers, Olwe felt that he missed becoming one of
them by a wisp of fate. The feeling was overwhelming. "I had to
get to know my brothers," he says.
There
are 21 million people living in Mumbai, generating 7,000 tonnes of
daily waste. In the western suburbs alone, where Olwe shot most of
these photos, this waste comes gushing through 65 kilometres of
bignallas, 56 kilometres of small nallas and
finally settles into 52 kilometres of box drains, before getting
released into the ocean. Some of the drainage lines are deep enough
to accommodate a double decker bus.
The
Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) currently engages 4,357
labourers to clean 54,600 manholes and open sewage lines manually,
using iron rods and spliced bamboo sticks.
"Once
they descend below they are disconnected from the world above,"
says Olwe.
In
his photo book, "In search of dignity and justice, the untold
story of conservancy workers", published last year by Spenta
Multimedia and supported by the Sir Dorabji Tata Trust, he writes:
The
workers describe entering a manhole as a descending into hell. Once
inside there is nothing but darkness. Anything could happen to the
worker. He could slip in the knee-deep water and slime and lose
consciousness, or be carried away in the rush of water and waste. And
there are poisonous gases - methane, nitrogen, ammonia and hydrogen
sulphide - generated by the decaying organic matter. These toxic
gases have been the cause of many deaths.
There
are two ways the workers check for toxic gases. One is by throwing a
lit match stick into the hole. If there are any gases, it will burn
and they begin their descend after the fire subsides. The second is
by checking for cockroaches, which are not known to die easily. If
there are no cockroaches, then they throw in the lit match stick for
the gas to escape. Sometimes all tactics fail.
BMC's
numbers suggest that in the last six years, 1,386 conservancy workers
have lost their lives at work
With the growing number of deaths
every year, the solid waste management or SWM department of the civic
body has now commissioned a study to assess the reasons for it.
According
to a 2007 estimate, at least 22,327 men and women die in India every
year doing various kinds of sanitation work. The Planning Commission
sub-group on Safai Karamcharis says there could be about 12 lakh
manual scavengers across India, picking human faeces with their bare
hands. Of these 12 lakh manual scavengers, 9,600 deaths are reported
each year.
Assuming
they don't die in a manhole, death awaits outside in the form of
various diseases, the most common being jaundice and tuberculosis
from the bacteria they ingest. Then there are also liver related
diseases that workers suffer from after years of consuming cheap
alcohol before they dive in.
“
How else can such a job be done in your right senses? You have to
numb your senses to go down there," says Olwe. It is no surprise
then that the average lifespan of a conservancy worker, assuming he
does not die at work, is a mere 45 years, by which time the tormented
become the tormentors at home. Abusive, full of self-hatred and
contempt for life, the bitterness they live with is perhaps more
toxic than the sewage they are covered in each day.
When
illegal becomes acceptable Isn't this work illegal? According to
Olwe, the laws banning such work exist only on paper and seem far
removed from the complex reality staring at the face of these workers
every day.
Take
the case of The Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and
Their Rehabilitation Act, which was passed in 2013. The Act prohibits
any manual handling of human waste before its decomposition.
Importantly, the Act includes unsanitary work done in septic tanks,
sewage lines, and railways latrines, roping in thousands of sewage
workers of the kind Olwe has photographed under the ambit of the Act.
It
also instructs every local authority, cantonment board and railway
authority to survey insanitary latrines within its jurisdiction and
identify manual scavengers. Owners are to be held responsible for the
conversion of all dry latrines into sanitary ones.
According
to the Act, current sewage workers would have to be assigned other
work on the same payment, an uphill task considering the job fetches
them at least Rs 15,000 a month.
It
also entitles them to livelihood skill training, concessional loans
for a new enterprise and to be provided with a residential plot with
financial assistance to build a house - all of which, if not done,
would mean penalties that could go up to Rs 5 lakh. This way, the Act
envisagescurbing
open defecation within three years.
Incidentally
this is the second attempt at doing away with the shameful practice
of manual scavenging. The first, passed in 1993, was called
Employment of Manual Scavengers and Construction of Dry Latrines
(Prohibition) Act. It was hardly implemented. And like this one,
things never changed for the 750,000 families that still work as
manual scavengers.
It
wasn't sympathy that moved Olwe, but identity. He belongs to the
Mahar caste, like Mumbai's 38,000 conservancy workers
At
a manhole level, status quo appears far safer than a total ban. Let's
get real. Who will give a stinking sewage cleaner any job outside of
sewage cleaning? Some workers feel scared that the 2013 ban would
eventually snatch away their only hope for a livelihood.
The
authorities say that when a drain is blocked, it is only a human
being who clears the blockages. No long pole or machine will suffice.
With such a law, who will dive in to keep the city's sewer lines
unclogged? This is what they ask pointedly.
"We've
woken up to this problem late. The existing drainage systems in most
metro cities was laid out more than 100 years ago. These drains were
designed in a fashion that involved manual cleaning. Changing the
sewage system structurally is a mammoth task requiring huge
investments that state governments are lethargic to undertake,"
says Vivek Gupta, a Rajya Sabha MP from West Bengal and an activist
who worked closely on drafting the 2013 bill banning sewage work.
Gupta
says the bill, being the prerogative of the state to implement,
requires all states to take certain hard decisions sooner or later
for the benefit of society.
The
stench isn't easy to get rid of
One
morning, when Olwe went to meet the families of conservancy workers
at south Mumbai's Antop Hill, he saw a huge mound of debris and
spotted a big crowd gathered around it. Someone was calling the
police and there was much commotion. Acting on a gut instinct, he
pushed his way through the crowd and stood at the foot of the ripe
smelling pile of garbage.
What
he saw haunted him for many months after. It was a dead baby. Thrown
into the garbage just like a used rag cloth. Yes, it was a girl. And
from the look of it, she looked like a healthy baby just born earlier
in the day and perhaps thrown just a few minutes ago. The police
arrived soon and ushered away the baby. She was taken straight to a
hospital and pronounced dead.
The
photo and several others in his body of work on conservancy workers
went on to win National Geographic's All Roads Photographers Award in
2005.
Before
Olwe went to the United States to receive the award, he had an
overarching discomfort in being its recipient. Won't my photos expose
a shameful side of India to the world? That's when he sought advice
from senior photographer Raghu Rai, who reminded Olwe that he was an
ambassador of the conservancy workers first and not India.
Dead
babies, rotting street dogs, road kills, sanitary napkins drenched in
blood, glass, needles, medical waste, diapers full of shit - there is
nothing that these workers haven't touched with their bare hands and
unflinchingly carried over their head to the dumping ground. And Olwe
captures it all so vividly that makes one wince.
From
a photo of a dead dog being picked up out of a garbage bin to a man
neck deep inside a man hole full of sewage to a family of conservancy
workers living on a tiny little stairway landing in which they raise
their two kids, to the various desperate living and working
conditions of these families trapped in this livelihood for
generations, Olwe gives the profession the panoramic view it
deserves.
So
why do they do it?
There
is a simple answer. In a country that gives you no choice, you do the
work that you are allowed to do.
Babasaheb
Ambedkar had preached one way of dissolving the caste system. He told
the Dalits to migrate far and wide, inter marry into various castes
and get employment in diverse fields of vocations. This way, he
envisioned, the Dalits could eventually liberate themselves from the
burden of their caste.
When
the Mahars of Konkan, sick of cleaning human shit, gathered the guts
to move to Mumbai in search of employment, the entire city's sewage
was waiting to embrace them.
The
jobs in all the various categories of conservancy work across India
are reserved for the Scheduled Castes. There is 100% reservation in
Mumbai for SCs like the Mahars. The job passes from husband to wife
to child, for generations.
In
the city of Chennai, 95% of the 10,000-odd conservancy workers hail
from one particular caste, the Arunthatiyar caste, and are condemned
to manually handle the 5,000 tons of solid waste that is produced by
the city every day. The same goes for Delhi, Bangalore and other
large cities.
Dr
Shailesh Kumar Darokar, Associate Professor, Tata Institute of Social
Sciences, says in Olwe's book, "We have not let go of our past
but simply re-invented it; we are still guilty of perpetuating caste
hierarchies and even making them stronger by having caste-based
occupations and that too in the public sector."
In
Anand Patwardhan's Jai Bhim Comrade, a worker, ankle-deep in
slime in Mumbai's dumping ground, loses an eye when his pitchfork
hits him. Forget compensation, even a cap to protect his head from
shit isn't part of his contract.
In
his photos, Olwe makes you realise how the same hopeless conditions
are so completely acceptable to us city dwellers. Nobody realises
that cleanliness is happening at the cost of gross human rights
violations.
The
1948 United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of
the Crime of Genocide, to which India is a signatory, defines
genocide as "any of the following acts committed with intent to
destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious
group, as such: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily
or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on
the group conditions of life, calculated to bring about its physical
destruction in whole or in part."
Is
this not then a genocide we have collectively allowed, in the name of
a swachh Bharat?
Pic-1:
Once inside, there is nothing but darkness. The worker could pass out
from inhaling some toxic gas, or be carried away in the rush of water
and waste
Pic-2:
This work requires no special skill, just a pair of arms and legs and
the courage to descend into hell
Pic
– 3: No human beings should have to work in such dehumanising
conditions. 30,000 people do
Pic- 4:
Clearing garbage is back-breaking work. There are scars where the
pole digs into Jadhav's shoulders
Pic
– 5: It's the most despicable kind of reservation: jobs in all
categories of 'conservancy' work are reserved for the scheduled
castes
