![]() In 2013, the Indian parliament enacted The Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and Their Rehabilitation Act (the 2013 Act) outlawing all manual excrement cleaning. The report is a key resource in learning more about this practice. The 2014 Human Rights Watch report C leaning Human Waste: “Man ual Scavenging,” Caste, and Discrimination in India documents that manual scavenging’ persists with the support and collusion of local officials. Though this vile and inhumane practice was abolished by law in India in 1993 the practice is deeply entrenched in South Asian societies. Navi Pillay, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights in 2013 ![]() The nature of the work itself then reinforces that stigma. Manual scavenging is not a career chosen voluntarily by workers, but is instead a deeply unhealthy, unsavoury and undignified job forced upon these people because of the stigma attached to their caste. They are paid less than minimum wages and are often forced to borrow money from upper-caste neighbours in order to survive and consequently they end up maintaining the relationship of bondage. Manual scavengers earn as little as one rupee a day. Dalit scavengers are rarely able to take up another occupation due to discrimination related to their caste and occupational status, and are thus forced to remain scavengers. It is estimated that around 1.3 million Dalits in India, mostly women, make their living through manual scavenging – a term used to describe the job of removing human excrement from dry toilets and sewers using basic tools such as thin boards, buckets and baskets, lined with sacking, carried on the head. ![]()
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