Dalits
Cry on the Eve of the Ambedkar Festival
The more than four-month-long Bhim Yatra that
culminated a day before the 125th birth celebrations of B R Ambedkar
highlighted the pitiable conditions of the most downtrodden of the Dalits, the
manual scavengers. While there are a slew of laws to check manual scavenging,
they remain largely on paper. The Dalit leadership has also ignored the plight
of manual scavengers.
As the world readied for the gala celebration of
the 125th birth anniversary of Babasaheb Ambedkar, a section of Dalits who work
as manual scavengers gathered in the capital. They had marched 3,500 km,
starting at Dibrugarh in Assam more than four months ago. Traversing 500
districts in 30 states over 125 days, the manual scavengers’ march, called the
Bhim Yatra, reached Jantar Mantar in New Delhi on 13 April 2016.
The Dalits had rallied under the banner of Safai
Karmachari Andolan (SKA) and their cry of anguish, “Do Not Kill Us,”
referred to more than 22,000 unsung deaths of sanitation workers every
year—incidentally acknowledged by the Bharatiya Janata Party Member of
Parliament, Tarun Vijay, in the Rajya Sabha, just the previous month. With
tears flowing down their cheeks and in choking voices, several children
narrated horrific tales of their kith and kin falling victims to this noxious
practice. The stories symptomised a terrible paradox. While Ambedkar is being lionised
as a super icon, the people he lived and fought for have to beg for their basic
existence.
Pervasive Hypocrisy
The Constitution of India abolished untouchability
but did nothing to change the conditions that reproduce it. The safai
karamcharis, who had marched to Delhi, suffer untouchability in its worst
form. They are untouchables not only to the caste Hindus but even to other
Dalit castes. Gandhi, notwithstanding his regressive views on the matter, had
rightly identified Bhangi (caste identified with manual scavenging) as the
representative of Dalits and posed himself as one to make his point. He lived
in a Bhangi colony to show his love for them. It was imperative that the state
swearing by Gandhi should have given top priority to outlawing this dehumanising
work and rehabilitating people engaged in it. But it chose to dodge the issue
with its pet strategy of launching committees and commissions which while
exhibiting concern about manual scavenging also deferred dealing with it for 46
years.
This game had begun as early as 1949 and continues
even today. In 1949, the then government of Bombay appointed a committee, the
Scavengers’ Living Conditions Enquiry Committee, headed by V N Barve, to
enquire into the living conditions of the scavengers and suggest ways to
ameliorate them. The committee submitted its report in 1952. In 1955, the
Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) circulated a copy of the major recommendations
of this committee to all the state governments and asked them to adopt them.
However, nothing happened.
In 1957, the MHA set up a committee headed by N R
Malkani to prepare a scheme to put an end to the practice of scavenging. The
committee submitted its report in 1960; it asked the central and state
governments to jointly draw up a phased programme for implementing its
recommendations so as to end manual scavenging within the Third Five Year Plan.
Nothing came of these recommendations too.
In 1965, the government appointed another committee
to look into the matter. The committee recommended the dismantling of the
hereditary task structure under which non-municipalised cleaning of private
latrines was passed on from generation to generation of scavengers. This report
also went into cold storage. In 1968–69, the National Commission on Labour recommended
a comprehensive legislation for regulating the working, service and living
conditions of scavengers. During the Gandhi Centenary Year (1969), a special
programme for converting dry latrines to water-borne flush latrines was
undertaken but it failed at the pilot stage itself. In 1980, the MHA introduced
a scheme for conversion of dry latrines into sanitary latrines and
rehabilitation of liberated scavengers and their dependents in selected towns
by employing them in dignified occupations. In 1985, the scheme was transferred
from MHA to the Ministry of Welfare. In 1991, the Planning Commission
bifurcated the scheme: the Ministries of Urban Development and Rural
Development were made responsible for conversion of dry latrines and the
Ministry of Welfare (renamed Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment in May
1999) was given the task of rehabilitating scavengers. In 1992, the Ministry of
Welfare introduced National Scheme for Liberation and Rehabilitation of
Scavengers (NSLRS) and their Dependents but that too had little effect.
Criminal Neglect
Articles 14, 17, 21 and 23 of the Constitution
could be counted upon to stop the practice of manual scavenging. For instance,
Section 7A and 15A of the Protection of Civil Rights Act, 1955 (formerly known
as the Untouchability (Offences) Act, 1955), enacted to implement Article 17,
provided for the liberation of scavengers as well as stipulating punishment for
those continuing to engage scavengers. As such, one could argue that there was
no need for the Employment of Manual Scavengers and Construction of Dry
Latrines (Prohibition) Act, 1993. This act had received the presidential assent
on 5 June 1993, but remained unpublished in the Gazette of India until
1997. No state promulgated it until 2000. Irked by the persistent inaction by
the government, the SKA, started by the children of the Safai Kamgars in 1994,
along with six other civil society organisations and seven people belonging to
the community of manual scavengers, filed a public interest litigation (PIL) in
the Supreme Court in December 2003. The PIL called for contempt proceeding
against the government. The denial mode of the various state governments had to
be countered by the SKA with voluminous data during a 12-year battle that
culminated in a sympathetic judgment on 27 March 2014.
The Court inter alia directed the government to
give compensation of ₹10 lakh to next-of-kin of each manual scavenger who died
on duty (including sewer cleaning) since 1993. The Bhim Yatra documented 1,268
such deaths; only 18 of the deceased had received compensation.
Parliament has also passed another act, the
Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and Their Rehabilitation Act,
2013. But nothing has moved on the ground. While the state governments had gone
on denial spree after promulgation of the 1993 Act, the 2011 Census of India found 794,000 cases of manual
scavenging across India. The biggest violator of this law are the government’s
own departments. Toilets of train carriages of the Indian Railways, for
example, drop excreta on tracks, which is manually cleaned by scavengers. The
Prime Minister, who pompously declared India to be scavenger free by 2019 as
part of his Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, and spoke of getting a bullet train network
in India, could not even indicate a deadline by which the railways would
replace all current toilets with bio-toilets.
Why This Apathy?
The lack of political will is evident in the
statement of the central government, apparently in response to the SKA’s Bhim
Yatra, on 19 April that it could not receive data from the states and would
directly survey the incidence of manual scavenging in the country. It does not
require much intelligence to surmise that this survey would buy the government
another decade to wear out the struggling safai karmacharis. But why should the
government that dreams of playing a leading role in world affairs choose to
live with such abiding shame? It is not a very difficult question. Political
will in India is informed by electoral logic. The minuscule community of the
scavengers is hopelessly fragmented, ghettoised at every locale, detached from
not only the larger society but even the Dalit community. Unto itself, the
community is insignificant in the electoral schema of any political party. The
only deterrence for the ruling classes is that it is a national
embarrassment—as untouchability was for early reformers. Like untouchability,
the custom of manual scavenging is tied up with the feudal culture, the
threatening of which meant incurring displeasure of the majority community.
While understanding the ruling class attitude to
the problem is simple, more intriguing is the apathy of the Dalit movement
towards the manual scavengers. The mainstream Dalit movement has never really
taken up the issue of manual scavenging with any seriousness. The pivotal
strategy of the Dalit movement has been representation. Ambedkar struggled to
get reservation in politics and thereafter instituted it in public employment
(education being prerequisite for employment). He expected that the Dalit
politicians would protect political interests of the masses from the community
and the educated Dalits entering bureaucracy could provide a protective cover
for the labouring masses. There was no direct engagement with the material
problems of the Dalit masses. It is therefore that reservations became the sole
concern of the Dalit movement, which has distanced from issues relating with
the labouring Dalits. The middle class that came into existence among Dalits
over the last seven decades, virtually got detached from the Dalit masses.
It is revealing that in the Bhim Yatra, while
Ambedkar was an imposing presence as an inspiring icon, the “Ambedkarites” were
absent. Notable progressive individuals registered their solidarity with the
struggle of the poor scavengers but the self-proclaimed Ambedkarites were
conspicuous by their absence.
- See
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