"... WHAT IS the solution? Governments over six decades have bypassed the
issue. While Nehruvian India saw a great push towards technological
solutions in every sector, the State only had apathy for safai
karamcharis. It is not the lack of funds or technology that poses
problems. If technology can be used to launch satellites and the Rs 386-
crore Chandrayaan (the mission to moon), why can it not be used for
garbage and sewage? ..."
"... What is the fate of the lakhs of Dalits forced to do sanitation work?
At least 22,327 Dalits of a sub-community die doing sanitation work every
year. ... that 288 workers had died in 2004-05, 316 in 2003-04, and 320 in
2002-03, in just 14 of the 24 wards of the BMC. About 25 deaths every
month. These figures do not include civic hospital workers, gutter
cleaners or sanitation workers on contract. Compare this with the 5,100
soldiers ^W army, police, paramilitaries ^W who have died between 1990 and
2007 combating militancy in Jammu & Kashmir. ...
----------------------
*Life Inside A Black Hole*
Tehelka, Dec 08 , 2007
*http://www.tehelka.com/story_main36.asp?filename=Ne081207LIFE_INSIDE.asp*
*Beneath the glitter of India are dark alleys in which are trapped
poisonous gases and millions of Dalits who do our dirty job in return for
disease and untouchability. **S. ANAND** reports**
* Yeh suhana mausam, yeh khula aasmaan, kho gaye hum yahaan, haye, kho
gaye hum yahaan...* (This lovely weather, these wide open skies, we are
lost in the bliss, oh, we are lost here..)
IN THE Radio Mirchi television commercial, a paan-chewing man in a safari
suit is shown wondering what keeps the man down in the manhole so happy
that he should sing. Zooming in on the trousers and footwear left beside
the manhole cover, the tagline says: "*Mirchi Sunnewaale… Always Khush*".
Conceived by Prasoon Joshi of Mc-Cann Erickson, the ad has been on air for
close to two years now without a murmur of protest from viewers or civil
rights groups. Perhaps the idea that even the faceless manhole cleaner is
happy, listening to FM radio, is comforting. A Radio Mirchi official
believed the ad would "elicit the maximum amount of laughter." A blogger
praised the ad for its "simple concept, beautiful execution, high recall
value." After all, we develop a capacity to be blind when we see an open
manhole and "men at work".
What is the weather really like inside a manhole? What happens to the
shit, piss and other waste flushed down by 18.02 percent of the billion-
plus population — those with the luxury of a water closet facility in
India according to Census 2001? What is the fate of the lakhs of Dalits
forced to do sanitation work? At least 22,327 Dalits of a sub-community
die doing sanitation work every year. (*see box*). Safai Kamgar Vikas
Sangh, a body representing sanitation workers of the Brihanmumbai
Municipal Corporation (BMC), sought data under the Right to Information
Act in 2006, and found that 288 workers had died in 2004-05, 316 in
2003-04, and 320 in 2002-03, in just 14 of the 24 wards of the BMC. About
25 deaths every month. These figures do not include civic hospital
workers, gutter cleaners or sanitation workers on contract. Compare this
with the 5,100 soldiers — army, police, paramilitaries — who have died
between 1990 and 2007 combating militancy in Jammu & Kashmir.
It is only in the fantastic world of Hindi cinema —* Don, Dhoom-2* — that
a character nonchalantly enters a drain and emerges unscathed. In Delhi,
on May 6, 2007, three men — Ramesh (30), Santosh (32) and Ashish (35) —
died of asphyxiation in a manhole in Dabri. Subcontracted by the Delhi Jal
Board (DJB), Ansal Constructions had employed three migrant workers from
Uttar Pradesh to enter the clogged manhole. With no prior experience, they
inhaled noxious gases, and died instantly. The Dabri deaths merited a
routine mention in some dailies. In July 2006, when six-year-old Prince
Kumar Kashyap fell in a 50- feet deep borewell pit in Haldheri village,
Haryana, and was rescued by the army, it became national news. The rescue
was televised, with Chief Minister Bhoopinder Singh Hooda, Kurukshetra MP
Naveen Jindal and others camping at the site. Prince received gifts worth
Rs 7 lakh. *The Times of India* headlined him as the "Rural Page 3 kid".
However, a Dalit dying in a sewer is a non-event.
The men and women — invariably Dalits — who ceaselessly manage to keep our
cities, towns and villages clean, die every day around us. We never notice
their lives or deaths. These are the soldiers who, bereft of the honour of
uniform and the posthumous glamour of martyrdom, sacrifice their lives
making sure the rivers of filth flow unhindered. Forced to touch, immerse
themselves in — and perforce taste — the fermented faeces of millions,
they are condemned to untouchability. The genocide passes unnoticed since
there are a million invisible Dalits who will quietly take the place of
the dead.
*THE BELLY OF THE BEAST*
What does this beast that gobbles human lives look like? Who feeds it? In
Delhi, it is a humongous many-mouthed subterranean creature — a network of
5,600 km of sewers with about 1.5 lakh manholes, managed by the DJB —
which consumes 2,781 million litres of thesewage Delhi generates daily.
The journey begins from kitchens, bathrooms and toilets through four-inch
house drains that empty into the main sewer. The 9-inch trunk sewers carry
the slush to bigger lines of 2m to 3m diameter. This network of pipes is
laid below ground level with "sufficient gradient" to ensure a
"selfcleansing" velocity of about 1 metre per second. Reared on a mixed
diet of domestic, commercial and industrial wastewater, with stormwater
drains sometimes hitching a ride and burdening its mangled intestines, the
beast develops serious indigestion every day. It is indiscriminately fed a
wide range of objects that causes clogs — condoms, sanitary pads,
nondegradable thermocol, a variety of plastics, industrial sludge, kitchen
waste, toilet cleaning acids, medical waste (syringes, blades, even
placenta), glass shards, household gadgets, construction debris. It is
then that the 5,500* beldars*— as sewer workers are designated by the DJB—
enter its bowels. (In Chennai, the sewerage network spreads across 2,800
km with 80,000 manholes— a manhole every 35 metres.) The indigestion
produces a variety of gases. When sewage decomposes and ferments in a
stagnant state, hydrogen sulphide is formed.
Known as sewer gas, it has a distinctive smell of rotten eggs.
Overexposure to this gas can cause olfactory fatigue — an inability to
detect its odour — which most manhole workers suffer from. Hydrogen
sulphide, which is explosive, acts as an irritant and asphyxiant,
affecting oxygen supply to the brain and stem cells. More than 100 parts
per million (ppm) of this gas in a manhole can result in instantaneous
suppression of respiration. Less than 10 ppm, which is routine, can result
in conjunctivitis and headaches.
METHANE IS the other lurking danger. Not only does it displace oxygen, it
is also explosive. Provided with no gasdetecting devices, most manhole
workers have ingenuous methods of checking the concentration of these
toxic gases. After opening the manhole cover, they let it vent a while,
then light a match and throw it in. If there's methane, it burns out. Once
the fire abates, the worker prepares to enter. Sateesh, a DJB worker from
Nandnagari, reveals another strategy: "After opening the cover, we check
if the cockroaches are alive. If they are dead, we leave the sewer open
for some time and then enter." Roaches are not known to die easily.
Entering the narrow, dark drain, the worker pushes his only weapon, the *
khapchi* — a spliced bamboo stick — to dislodge the block. This exercise
could take hours. "Holding our breath, closing our eyes, we plunge
headlong. We feel our way poking with the* khapchi*," says Sateesh. It is
then that a sudden blast of putrid sludge — besides methane, hydrogen
sulphide, carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide — assaults the person. "Even
if we manage not to swallow the toxic muck, it manages to enter our
bodies." Odourless and colourless, the carbon gases can cause suffocation.
If the worker survives the initial ordeal, he crouches inside and loads
the sludge into leaky metal buckets or wicker baskets for his team to haul
out. Depending on the clog, the entire operation could take up to 48
hours. "We often work after midnight. When people sleep, the flow in the
sewers is lesser, and our work does not disturb road-users," says Sateesh.
Among sewer workers, there's a category called "divers", whose brief is to
*swim* through the large pipelines, find the blocks, and clear them.
According to Ashish Mittal, an occupational health physician who
co-authored *Hole to Hell*, a 2005 study of sewer workers by the Centre
for Education and Communication (CEC), New Delhi, a manhole is "a
confined, oxygen-deficient space where the presence of noxious gases can
cause syncope — a sudden and transient loss of consciousness owing to
brief cessation of cerebral blood flow. The brain cannot tolerate even a
brief deprivation of oxygen. The long-term neurological effects of syncope
can be debilitating." In most developed nations, manhole workers are
protected in bunny suits to avoid contact with contaminated water and
sport a respiratory apparatus; the sewers are well-lit, mechanically
aerated with huge fans and therefore are not so oxygen deficient. In Hong
Kong, a sewer worker, after adequate training, needs at least 15 licences
and permits to enter a manhole.
In India, the manhole worker wears nothing more than a loincloth or
half-pants. In Delhi, since the directives of the National Human Rights
Commission in October 2002, the majority of the DJB's permanent workers
wear a "safety belt". It's a joke. This belt, connecting the worker
through thick ropes to men standing outside, offers no protection from the
gases and the sharp objects that assault the worker. At best, it helps
haul them out when they faint or die. The CEC's 2005 survey of 200 DJB
manhole workers found that 92.5 percent of the workers wore the safety
belt. This did not prevent 91.5 percent of them from suffering injuries
and 80 percent suffering eye infections. The survey found that diseases
like leptospirosis, viral hepatitis and typhoid were common. "During the
course of our six-month study, three of the 200 workers died," recalls
Mittal.
KM Chabukswa, 50, a manhole worker with the BMC since 1981, says: "After
the work, there is no provision for water to clean ourselves. We end up
walking a kilometre looking for water. We are prone to every possible
disease; workers take to drinking or doing drugs to get over the atrocity
of the job." Another BMC worker, Gautam Jadhav, 33, says: "I suffer from
sinus; my eyes swell up. I recently had typhoid. No one likes standing
next to us because of the stink."
NOT SURPRISINGLY, most of the workers die before retirement. Owing to loss
of appetite and inevitable alcoholism, many men shrink to half their size
if they work 20 years. The average lifespan of a manhole worker is about
45. And if a worker does not die inside a manhole, the civic body does not
offer any monetary compensation for illnesses/deaths owing to occupational
hazards. In Delhi, permanent workers get a monthly "risk allowance" of Rs
50. In some states this rises to Rs 200. The entry-level salary of a
sanitation worker in New York is $30,000 per year. In the sixth year, he
could earn $67,141 (Rs 2.18 lakh per month). In India, a permanent
sanitation worker with 20 years experience could make Rs 12,000 a month.
*THE ILLOGIC OF REFORM*
Human rights activists, Marxists, Gandhians, journalists, NGOs, lawyers
and courts have always believed that the work of safai karamcharis,
especially that of manhole workers, must be "humanised" and "mechanised"
to minimise contact with waste. This school of "amelioration and reform"
says working conditions must be improved, that safai karamcharis should be
paid minimum wages, provided with insurance cover, masks, gum boots, bunny
suits, oxygen cylinders and other safety equipment. "It's like saying a
woman should be raped only after she is allowed to wear her bridal best
and covers her face with a veil. The point is, Dalits should not be going
down these drains at all. Provided with bunny suits and Rs 50,000 per
month, will Brahmins start immersing themselves in these sewers?" asks
Parshottam Vaghela, a Balmiki activist who runs Manav Garima in
Ahmedabad.In Ludhiana, when two sewer workers died this July, the
corporation provided 50 safety kits to about 800 workers. The kit included
a mask that weighed 18 kg. The workers could not get down into 12-inch
diameter manholes with such a weight. In Delhi, workers were provided with
a "mandatory gas cylinder" that weighed an unwieldy 13 kg. "It made things
worse. It's like tying us with a millstone and pushing us down the sea of
slush," says DJB worker Rajinder Kumar. According to Mittal, "Given that
three entries into the manhole: to fix the rod, to make it work, and to
detach it," says Jassubhai Atmaram, 42, who has been working in the
Sabarmati area of Ahmedabad for 21 years. The few supersucker machines
cannot enter narrow lanes; even a metro like Delhi has only three of them.
In response to a special civil application filed by Ahmedabadbased NGO
Kamdar Swasthya Suraksha Mandal, the Gujarat High Court ordered in
February 2006 that "unless it is absolutely necessary to have sewage
cleaning operation done through a human agency, none of the civic bodies
in the state will now employ human agency to carry out drainage cleaning
operation."
Despite the HC order, workers have been entering Gujarat's manholes on a
routine basis. HP Mishra, who heads KSSM, says, "Fourteen workers have
died inside manholes between March 2006 and August 2007." Of these, 12
died as contract workers despite the HC order also stating that "civic
bodies are directed to discontinue the practice of engaging contractors."
Like other sectors in post-liberalisation India, sewer cleaning,
construction and maintenance of sewage treatment plants and sanitation
work are being privatised in many cities and towns. Whether contractors
offer a minimum wage or implement even the prescribed safety norms —
themselves laughable — is not monitored. The State simply washes its hands
of the dirty business.
For instance, in 2003, the Chennai Metropolitan Water Supply and Sewerage
Board outsourced "250 sewer divers for working in 161 depots of CMWSSB for
removal of sewer obstructions in the sewer system, silt removal from
manholes and allied works for one year." The contract was bagged by KK
Kumar Constructions for a bid of over Rs 1 crore.
According to the Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board Sanitary
Workers Union, there are only 88 manhole workers in the Karnataka capital.
Says union president Lakshmaiah, "When we started the union in 1982,
Bangalore officially had 385 manhole workers. BWSSB does not want to
recruit since it prefers privatisation and outsourcing."
WHAT IS the solution? Governments over six decades have bypassed the
issue. While Nehruvian India saw a great push towards technological
solutions in every sector, the State only had apathy for safai
karamcharis. It is not the lack of funds or technology that poses
problems. If technology can be used to launch satellites and the Rs 386-
crore Chandrayaan (the mission to moon), why can it not be used for
garbage and sewage? The Jawaharlal Nehru Urban Renewal Mission (JNURM),
hatched by the Ministry of Urban Development in 2002, envisages spending
Rs 1,20,536 crore over seven years on urban local bodies. Of the projects
approved so far under the JNURM, 40 percent have been allotted for
drainage and sewerage work. Why does so much money get spent on
laying/relaying pipes and drains that are designed to kill? India's urban
planners, designers and technologists have never felt the need to conceive
a human-friendly system of managing garbage and sewage. Instead, they rely
on an unending source of disposable, cheap, Dalit labour.
*—with Shalini Singh in Mumbai, M. Radhika in Bangalore and PC Vinoj Kumar
in Chennai*
*Dying In The Gutters*
*At the very least, 22,327 Dalits die every year cleaning sewage. Their
deaths rarely attract attention of either the State or society. Isn't it
genocide, asks **S. ANAND*
AHMEDABAD NGO Kamdar Swasthya Suraksha Mandal believes that at a
conservative estimate, there could be over 1,000 manhole worker deaths per
year across India. Santosh Choudhary, chairperson of the National
Commission of Safai Karamcharis (NCSK), told TEHELKA that at least "two to
three workers must be dying every day inside manholes across India."
Another Ahmedabad NGO, Manav Garima, led by Balmiki activist Parshottam
Vaghela, has documented the deaths of 145 manhole workers in seven years
in the municipalities of Vadodara, Surat and Ahmedabad.
According to data obtained in Mumbai under the RTI Act, 2,039 safai
karamcharis (SKs) died between 1996 and 2006 in 14 of the city's 24 civic
wards. Projected to all 24 wards in the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation
(BMC), the figure stands at 3,495 deaths over 10 years in the city with a
population of 13 million. At 350 deaths per year from among 22,000
permanent sanitation workers in the BMC, the mortality rate (MR) is 16 for
every 1,000 SKs. Says demographer Leela Visaria, former director of the
Gujarat Institute of Development Research, "The death rate for urban
Indians aged 15-59 years is 3 per 1,000 population. This gives you an
indication about the deplorable health status of the Safai Karamcharis."
In neighbouring Pune, there were 227 deaths between October 2005 and
September 2007 for a population of 4.4 million. In the four metros, there
are 1,07,400 SKs serving a population of 36 million (see table). At an MR
of 16, at least 1,718 of these workers are dying every year. For the urban
population of 286 million, assuming there are 2,000 SKs per million,
conservatively there must be 5,72,000 SKs servicing urban India. At an MR
of 16, a minimum of 9,152 of them must be dying in our cities every year.
Officially, India has 6.76 lakh manual scavengers — those who dispose
human excreta with their bare hands — working in 96 lakh dry latrines. The
Planning Commission sub-group on SKs says, "Independent estimates indicate
that there could be about 12 lakh manual scavengers." For these 12 lakh
manual scavengers, if we assume a reduced, conservative MR of 8 per 1,000
workers, we arrive at 9,600 deaths per year.
With 5,500 permanent and 1,500 temporary *beldars *engaged in sewer work
for Delhi's 14 million population, there are 500 sewer workers per million
general population. India's 286 million urban population must be served by
at least 1,43,000 sewer workers. Assuming a higher MR of 25 among this
group, since their job is most hazardous, 3,575 sewer workers must be
dying every year.
All this adds up to 22,327 deaths every year among a cross-section of
sanitation workers. Visaria, who is on the advisory council of the
Population Foundation of India, says TEHELKA's projections are "very
conservative".
Unnoticed by the world, India has been subjecting a particular sub-caste
within Dalits to this genocide for decades. Article 2 of the 1948 United
Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of
Genocide, of which India is a signatory, defines genocide as "any of the
following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a
national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such: killing members of
the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life, calculated to
bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part…" Supreme Court
advocate Colin Gonsalves of Human Rights Law Network, says: "Viewed thus,
the Indian State definitely stands guilty of genocide."
*—with inputs from Shalini Singh in Mumbai*
*'Everyday, we smell death'*
*Balmiki Bara in Delhi's Aryapur is a basti of sewerage workers. Rajinder
Kumar, a resident, tells his story*
I JOINED THE Delhi Jal Board (DJB) in 1984 as a temporary worker. I became
permanent in 1989. I am 44. My present duty is at Ashok Vihar water tank.
My salary is Rs 9,600, but after deductions I make Rs 5,000 every month.
The job is hazardous. Most of the accidents and deaths occur because of
inhaling the dangerous gases. We receive no safety equipment, except a
safety belt sometimes. We received no training on how to use the other
equipment.
The litmus paper test to check the gas concentration level is never
conducted. I have worked in sewers as deep as 28 feet. Every day, we smell
death. I am never sure if I will safely return home.
My eldest brother Mahavir Kumar, a DJB *beldar* since 1976, died recently.
He was 46. On May 24, 2004, he was working with three men on a blocked
manhole in the Ashok Vihar/Wazirpur industrial area. Praveen, a 24-year
old, was inside the gutter, about 14 feet deep. At some point, Praveen was
not responding. His colleagues realised he had been overcome by the gases.
My brother instantly jumped into the sewer to save him. He too was
overwhelmed by the gases. He died instantly.
There was no supervising official or engineer present. Taken to Jagjeevan
Ram Hospital, both were declared "brought dead". The post-mortem report
said my brother died due to the inhalation of dangerous gases in the
gutter. Both the workers did not have any safety equipment at that time,
not even a safety belt. As part of compensation, my brother's son, Sagar,
aged 23, was made a *beldar* with the DJB in June 2004. He entered a sewer
12 days after his father's death.
*From Tehelka Magazine, Vol 4, Issue 47, Dated Dec 08 , 2007*
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