Indian workers forced to clean up human excrement

The Indian government should end “manual scavenging” – the cleaning of human waste by communities considered low-caste – by ensuring that local officials enforce the laws prohibiting this discriminatory practice, Human Rights Watch (HRW) has said. In a 96-page report, HRW says the government should implement existing legislation aimed at assisting manual scavengers find alternative, sustainable livelihoods.

The Indian government should end “manual scavenging” – the cleaning of human waste by communities considered low-caste – by ensuring that local officials enforce the laws prohibiting this discriminatory practice, Human Rights Watch (HRW) has said.

In a 96-page report, HRW says the government should implement existing legislation aimed at assisting manual scavengers find alternative, sustainable livelihoods. ‘Cleaning human waste: Manual scavenging, caste, and discrimination in India’ documents the ‘coercive nature’ of manual scavenging, with ‘low-caste’ workers compelled to remove waste by hand from dry toilets, sewers and septic tanks.

“Successive Indian government attempts to end caste-based cleaning of excrement have been derailed by discrimination and local complicity,” said Meenakshi Ganguly, HRW’s South Asia director. “The government needs to get serious about putting laws banning manual scavenging into practice and assisting the affected caste communities.”

HRW interviewed more than 135 people, including more than 100 people currently or formerly working as manual scavengers. It found women who clean dry toilets in rural areas often are not paid cash wages, but instead as a customary practice receive leftover food, grain during harvest, old clothes during festival times, and access to community and private land for grazing livestock and collecting firewood – all at the discretion of the households they serve.

In other instances, wages have been withheld, with the workers forced against their will to continue clearing the human waste.