“The worst job in the world”

Updated - Monday 30 November 2009

About 1.3 million Indians are still trapped in the degrading and dangerous job of manual scavenging of human excreta sixteen long years after the country passed a law to make the health threatening job illegal.

Even in modern India, manual scavengers are still working to clean what Wilson Bezwada of Safai Karmachari Andolan calls “shit from the pit” of people who then “discriminate and look down on the scavengers”. “The worst job in the world” is the title of the emotional video he showed at a side-event in Stockholm organised by WaterAid and IRC on 18 August 2009.

Safai Karmachari Andolan is a national campaign movement started by Mr. Bezwada who himself comes from a scavenger family. The campaign says: “Through eradicating manual scavenging, we will break the link imposed by the caste system between birth and dehumanizing occupations. It is a matter of human dignity".

“Like a priest predestined to preach”

Since 1986, the movement has been engaged in protracted struggles one of which was to change the mindsets of the scavengers themselves, many of whom believed that “like a priest who is predestined to preach, we are predestined to do this work”.
For Bezwada, the struggle for the eradication of manual scavengers will not end until every single person is liberated from the scourge. “This is not a fight for power, wealth nor fame but for human dignity and respect”, he said.

Not enough government commitment

Bezwada says that the Indian government has not demonstrated enough commitment to liberating those involved in the job that legally does not even exist.

Without any protective clothing such as boots, masks or gloves, manual scavengers, clean toilets and clogged sewer lines. They collect the faecal matter into baskets lined with leaves, an activity which leaves many sick. About 80 per cent of these workers are women, the majority of them are Dalits. They are paid a paltry 900 rupees (15 Euro) a month and can afford only cheap drugs to treat their illnesses.

For most of the scavengers the work is hideous and devoid of dignity. “We have not yet told our children what we do. They wont understand; there is no pride in it,” said one lady scavenger in the video.

Icon of hope

Bezwada has become an icon of hope for the hopeless as he strives to lift the manual scavengers from their plight with a 2010 battle plan already drawn up.

The situation is not all gloomy. Bezwada says that, thanks to Safai Karmachari Andolan, a significant number of manual scavengers have been liberated and equipped with alternative livelihoods.

Harriette Naa Lamiley Bentil, e-mail

See the related video below.

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