A recent article in The Guardian touches upon an age old job that no one wants to talk about: manual scavenging.
“A caste-based role, manual scavenging condemns mostly women to clean excreta from dry latrines with their hands and carry it on their heads to dumps. Men from the community clean open gutters and sewerage lines, often with no protective gear.”
If the assigned task wasn’t bad enough, their treatment in society is the salt in the proverbial wound. Any manual scavenger, including their children, are treated on a subhuman level in India’s society. Basically untouchable. And even though comparatively strict laws have been passed recently prohibiting manual scavenging, the practice still occurs due to the caste-based system and the discrimination that is deeply inherent within.
There is a silver lining though. Activist groups are now teaching these lower caste groups their rights and the laws that have been designed to protect them in a more modern society. Better still, they are educating the younger generations in these lower castes so that they can make a difference in their own way when it comes time for them to enact change.
“The way forward, activists believe, is to educate the younger generation, who are open to change. The barefoot lawyers initiative, which trains men and women from all communities, is a step in that direction.”
For sure, it’s an incredibly sobering read, but it’s also a very real problem that is gaining momentum towards a day when these sad old beliefs will, hopefully, be memories in a brighter future.