Who Cleans, Who Dies, Who Celebrates? Caste Politics Behind ‘Clean India’

 

Who Cleans, Who Dies, Who Celebrates? Caste Politics Behind ‘Clean India’

While Rs 1200 crore was spent on Swachh Bharat advertisements, Dalit workers continue to clean human waste with bare hands — and often die doing so. Manual scavenging remains a caste-imposed, deadly occupation masked by state neglect and public apathy. This is not development — it's a democracy burying its most dehumanised citizens beneath the promise of cleanliness

Noor Mahvish July 19, 2025

 

They go down into the sewers, but never come back the same. Some don’t come back at all.

This is not a line from a tragic novel. It is a brutal reality for thousands of Dalit workers across India who die, suffer, or disappear in the dark trenches of our gutters, septic tanks, and drains — all in the name of keeping our cities clean. Despite being legally banned, manual scavenging continues to kill, maim, and marginalize a community that has been historically dehumanized.

The Reality Beneath Our Feet

According to the National Commission for Safai Karamcharis (NCSK), over 400 deaths due to manual scavenging were recorded between 2018 and 2023. Activists and ground-level workers, however, insist the actual number is much higher, as many deaths go unreported, misreported, or simply ignored by local authorities. These are not accidents. These are institutional killings rooted in caste, class, and indifference.

Manual scavenging involves cleaning human waste from dry latrines, open drains, and septic tanks without protective gear. The Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and Their Rehabilitation Act, 2013, outlaws the practice, but enforcement is feeble and convictions are rare.

In 1993, India first banned manual scavenging. In 2013, the Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and Their Rehabilitation Act expanded the ban and introduced rehabilitation measures. Yet, nothing changed on the ground. The sewers remained full, the machines missing, and the same community kept dying.

According to official figures, over 400 sanitation workers have died cleaning sewers in just the last five years, but some social organisations claim this is a gross undercount, as many deaths go unreported, misclassified, or settled quietly. The fact that even today humans are sent into toxic, oxygen-deprived chambers to clean feces with bare hands is not just a policy failure — it is a moral crisis. A democracy that promises dignity to all still allows one caste to die for the cleanliness of others.

Caste and the Curse of Birth

At the heart of this injustice lies India’s caste system. Nearly all manual scavengers belong to Dalit communities, particularly sub-castes like Valmiki, Balmiki, or Hela, historically labelled “untouchables.” This is not just a coincidence. It is caste-based occupational segregation — society telling people: “You were born to clean our filth.”

Manual scavenging is not just a dangerous occupation; it is the modern face of an ancient injustice. Rooted in the oppressive caste system, it emerged from a deeply entrenched social order that designated Dalits, particularly Valmikis and Helas, as “filth handlers,” condemned by birth to clean human excreta. British colonial policies institutionalized it further by integrating manual scavenging into municipal governance, and post-Independence India failed to dismantle the system. Instead, it continued — often invisibly — with the state as both employer and silent enabler.

A 2019 report by Safai Karmachari Andolan (SKA) found that over 98% of manual scavengers are Dalits. Despite affirmative action and constitutional guarantees, their daily lives remain entrapped in discrimination, humiliation, and danger.

They are not just cleaning gutters; they are trapped in centuries of systemic exclusion.

Life on the Edge: Poverty, Disease, and No Way Out

Those who survive the job still carry the scars. They suffer from chronic respiratory illness, skin diseases, and mental health trauma. Their life expectancy is far lower than the national average. Children drop out of school early, often forced to take up the same work. Women in this community clean dry latrines with bare hands, earning a pittance and bearing layers of social ostracism.

Housing conditions remain deplorable, access to clean water and healthcare is minimal, and social mobility is virtually non-existent.

State Machinery: Where is the Machine?

Despite the promises of Swachh Bharat Abhiyan and speeches about a “New India,” the government has failed to mechanize sewage cleaning at scale. A 2021 Parliamentary Standing Committee Report noted that only 27% of urban local bodies had sewer cleaning machines. In most places, the equipment lies unused or is unavailable due to poor planning, corruption, or lack of political will.

Meanwhile, workers continue to be sent down toxic sewers without harnesses, masks, or gloves — inhaling methane and hydrogen sulphide gases that suffocate them within minutes.

What kind of development kills the poor so the rich can live hygienically?

Laws Without Teeth, Rehabilitation Without Meaning

The 2013 Act mandates not only prohibition but rehabilitation of manual scavengers with provisions like skill training, housing, and alternate employment. Yet, the implementation has been negligible. According to the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment, less than 50,000 manual scavengers have been officially identified — a number that doesn’t reflect the scale of the problem.

Even those “rehabilitated” often receive inadequate training or temporary contracts and are pushed back into unsafe jobs. Some are given tricycles to collect garbage — a mere cosmetic shift, not dignity.

Swachh Bharat but for Whom?

India celebrates cleanliness with celebrity endorsements and colorful ads. But who gets the credit, and who pays the price? Swachh Bharat Abhiyan claims success in building toilets but rarely addresses who cleans them, at what cost, and under what conditions.

The Swachh Bharat Abhiyan has become one of the most advertised government missions in Indian history, with over Rs 1200 crore spent solely on publicity and advertisements between 2014 and 2019, according to official government responses in Parliament. Billboards, television jingles, celebrity endorsements, and glossy social media campaigns have promoted the idea of a “clean India” far and wide.

But beneath this clean image lies a filthy truth: the same government that finds hundreds of crores to spend on ads cannot find the political will or budget to provide basic safety gear, mechanized equipment, or dignified rehabilitation for sanitation workers.

Imagine what Rs 1200 crore could do:

· It could equip every sanitation worker in India with proper PPE kits, gas detectors, and mechanized tools.
· It could fund thousands of safe machines to replace dangerous manual cleaning of sewers and septic tanks.
· It could provide livelihood training and educational scholarships to the children of safai karamcharis — breaking the chain of caste-based occupation.

Instead, the face of the campaign is a celebrity holding a broom, while the reality is a Dalit man suffocating to death inside a sewer.

Swachh Bharat was meant to be a mission for dignity. But for the sanitation workers — mostly Dalits — it has only meant more work, more danger, and the same silence. They are the ones who make the vision of a clean India possible, but they remain invisible in policy, ignored in budgets, and discarded in death.

How can a nation claim cleanliness when its most essential workers are forced to die in human waste? A broom in the Prime Minister’s hand is not cleanliness.

Justice is. Mechanisation is. Dignity is. Safety is.

Until the government spends more on saving the lives of its workers than selling slogans to its voters, Swachh Bharat will remain nothing but a lie written in bold and soaked in blood.

The Moral Collapse of a Nation

The Constitution of India guarantees equality and dignity. Yet, we have normalized a system where one caste cleans the waste of another — under threat of death, without any support or respect. This isn’t just social injustice. It is the moral collapse of a modern democracy that prides itself on equality while allowing a community to die in silence.

India’s Sewer is Not Just Underground — It’s in Our Society

The stench of injustice is not just in the gutters. It’s in our silence, our privilege, and our politics. We’ve allowed an entire community to be buried in the name of “cleanliness,” and turned our eyes away while they choke, suffocate, and die.

How long will we stay silent? How long will we walk on clean city roads while pretending not to see the bodies buried beneath them — the ones that suffocate and die in darkness just to keep our surroundings clean?

When a sanitation worker enters a sewer, they’re not just cleaning waste. They are carrying the weight of India’s caste system, apathy, and hypocrisy on their shoulders. Every time a Dalit worker is sent into a toxic drain without safety gear and dies there, it is not an accident. It is a murder. A murder sanctioned by society, overlooked by the state, and ignored by us.

The government spends hundreds of crores on Swachh Bharat advertisements, but it cannot provide a simple oxygen mask, a machine, or even the dignity of a safe job to those who actually clean our filth.

What does that say about our priorities? Are we only moved by their deaths? Or are we ready to be ashamed of the way they are forced to live?

Those we call “safai karamcharis” are not just cleaners. They are carriers of our collective guilt. Their hands do not just hold brooms — they hold the truth we refuse to face. A truth soaked in sewage, caste, and silence.

Until the day no human has to clean another human’s waste with their bare hands, we are not a clean country. We are just pretending to be one.

Courtesy: News Room India