Often swept away from the glare and nearly two decades after a law banned the practice, an estimated 1.3 million people across the country, particularly belonging to lower castes, are still forced into manual scavenging-- to clean human excrement with their bare hands.
There are many shortfalls evident in the implementation of the Employment of Manual Scavengers and Construction of Dry Latrines (prohibition) Act, 1993 and designing of government schemes which have allowed this practice to flourish over time. Many of the schemes for instance, target men, completely ignoring the fact that many women are employed as scavengers.
"No national or state-level body exists that will monitor the implementation of the act," points out a report released by the Rashtriya Garima Abhiyan (National Campaign for Dignity and Eradication of Manual Scavenging) in January 2011. Shamefully, government agencies themselves, particularly the railways have often been criticised for employing manual scavengers to clean sewer lines.
One of the biggest pitfalls in the fight against scavenging has been a government scholarship scheme offered to children of the victims, which requires that the family seeking the scholarship be manual scavengers for 100 days of the year. Such ill-conceived schemes only perpetuate the bias and force vulnerable groups to remain in such inhuman occupations.
The Centre is in the midst of proposing a stricter law to end the practice - Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation Bill, 2012. An online petition has already garnered 40,000 signatures. But it is perhaps time for the common man on the street to raise his voice for abolition of this practice.
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