Scavenging deeply rooted in caste system

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New Delhi: The country has not been able to do away with the dehumanizing practice of manual scavenging because the issue is not just about poverty or lack of awareness. Manual scavenging is deeply rooted in caste and attempts to stop the practice are still resisted.

CNN-IBN travelled to another village - Navrol in Madhya Pradesh to meet Shantibai. She's a manual scavenger and she hates her job. She has been doing this for 20 years because this is what her ancestors did.

Shantibai says, “We have been doing this for years. Our ancestors did it so we're also doing it.”

For this work that she finds extremely repulsive, Shantibai is not even paid regularly.

“We get food grains when the crop is good. This year there was a hailstorm, what will we get?” Shantibai adds.

Here in Navrol, manual scavengers are paid in kind. During harvest, they're given food grains in exchange of an entire year of work. But many like Shantibai have not received anything in the last 2-3 years due to crop failure.

And being Valmikis, they're at the bottom of the caste ladder and are not allowed to do any other work.

Shantibai tried her best to shrug the scavenger's tag but people in her village wouldn't allow 'the untouchable' to touch another job.

But all hope is not lost. Many have taken up the struggle against manual scavenging and the caste system and regained some of their lost dignity.

Battobai from Malanpur in Madhya Pradesh has found her lost voice. After marriage, she was forced into scavenging by her mother in law. Often locked up and denied food when she refused to work.

But last year her case was taken up by a local NGO and she successfully quit scavenging. Today she knocks doors of other scavenger women cajoling them to a better life.

Battobai says, “I tell people what will they eat in a salary of Rs 10 per month from each house? I tell them if they quit this job, they can earn up to Rs 50 a day.”

But even after quitting this work, Battobai finds that untouchability remains untouched.

“They say just because we're not scavenging anymore we can't become Thakurs. We will always remain Bhangis,” Battobai adds.

Ramvati also a manual scavenger gave up the disgraceful work two years ago. She'd much rather sweep the local police station than go back to cleaning other people's toilets.

Battobai and Ramvati may have had the courage to fight the system. But activists say, even today the country has as many as 13 lakh manual scavengers.

Safai Karamchari Andolan convenor Bezwada Wilson says, “We have enough money to convert the toilets. The main problem is we want to start we actually practice untouchability everywhere. Even the civil society and the government -everybody feel that, untouchables when they are cleaning the dry latrines there's nothing wrong because they are meant for that. They can only do these jobs."

And sure enough the local government in Gohad, Madhya Pradesh refuses to even acknowledge the presence of manual scavengers in the area.

Gohad BJP MLA Lal Singh Arya says, “There is not a single manual scavenger in Gohad.”

So even as laws are being flouted and human rights violated, the state simply chooses to look away.