The Worst Caste: Born to Collect Excrements

Your flushing toilet makes you almost unaware of the fact that your body produces dejections that must be drained somewhere else. But in the overcrowded and largely undeveloped India, 700 million Indians do not know what a flushing toilet is. A combination of under development and abject caste system condemns about 800,000 Indians to this: manual scavenging.

All scavengers belong to the lowest caste, "untouchable" (called now Dalit "Broken people"), comprising 180 million people in India, who still experience discrimination and prejudice, and whose task is to clear rubbish and human waste from the streets and open drains outside homes.

Bindeshwar Pathak of Sulabh International, an Indian NGO promoting the use of inexpensive cheap, squat-type toilets, recalls the rite his grandmother forced him to pass through for touching a low-caste woman in his natal village. "She forced me to swallow cow dung, cow urine, sand and Ganges water to purify myself," said Pathak, born in Uttar Pradesh (northern India).

He has been spending the last 30 years inside Sulabh International in the fight against this degrading occupation, practiced in 80 % of the cases by women. During a 3 months experience in a scavenger community, Pathak witnessed incredible cases, like that of a newly-married woman forced by her parents-in-law and husband to clean toilets.

"In India we have half a million scavengers who still manually clean about 10 million toilets daily. If they have done good things for the society by cleaning toilets, what has the society done for them? Society has kept them at the lowest level of the social hierarchy - the untouchables, the lowest among the low.", said Pathak.

"I've grown old doing this dirty work. For the past 20 years I've been cleaning toilets because this is the only way I can feed my children. Everyone considers us dirty and stays away from us. If I was able to find another job, why would I do this?" said Sharadah, a manual scavenger in Nand Nagri, a village outside Delhi.

Sharadah and her husband clean daily about 40 houses, a work that takes over 12 hours and brings them only $15 a month, that barely allow them, to feed their 7 children. "When I first went to do this job I was 21 years old. I was so overwhelmed by the stench and smell that I felt sick and fainted, falling in the gutter. No one came to pick me up because I was covered with filth. I sat there crying until one of my family members came. I felt so disgusted that I could not eat the whole day!", says Sharadah.

"In the rainy season, it is really bad. Water mixes with the shit and when we carry it (on our heads) it drips from the baskets, on to our clothes, our bodies, our faces. When I return home I find it difficult to eat food sometimes. The smell never gets out of my clothes, my hair. But this is our fate. To feed my children I have no option but to do this work.", said Narayanamma, 35, who started cleaning human excrements at 13.

"My husband was unemployed and often drank alcohol or took drugs. We had no income and I had to find a way out. Initially, I tried looking for a job in a school or nursing home, but no one would take me. The first question they always ask is your caste-system.", said Meena, Sharadah's daughter, forced to work on this, too.

Meena is now involved in the activity of a NGO called Safai Karamchari Andolan (SKA), a nationwide organization whose goal is getting rid of manual scavenging in India in about three years. "Manual scavenging is most prevalent in the Indian states of Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat. This is an issue of dignity. But working in such nasty conditions, scavengers are also suffering from health problems", said Bezwada Wilson, the national convener of SKA. "The stench forces scavengers to hold their breath for long periods of time, causing respiratory problems."

The practice is illegal since 1993, just that the law is not applied. In India, where people struggle for progress and development, many women clean excrements in the most primitive manner possible. "There has not been a single prosecution for violating this law in India, so who will obey or implement this act? Most districts are not even aware [of the law]. Because of the practice of the caste system in India, people have been forced to do such menial jobs. Focus should now be given on how to liberate scavengers from this. We already have flush toilets - what is needed is rehabilitation." said Wilson.

Today, Dalits remain the poorest of the poor; they are mostly child workers, illiterates, bonded laborers, and have the worst health, the worst education and the worst jobs. 57 years after India got its independence, Dalits still face daily injustices in the Indian villages (especially in northern India), and can be murdered, raped and viciously humiliated merely because they have tried to break out of the caste trap to claim their rights as equal beings.

Dalits will not be served food in many eateries. They must sit outside and drink their tea away from the other customers. Special 'Untouchable' cups are put on the shelf outside. The Dalit has to take his/her cup, and put it on a counter carefully without touching the waiter. The tea will be poured from a safe, non polluting distance and after drinking the tea, the Dalit must wash the cup and place it back on the Dalit shelf outside.