Addressing the Roadblocks in Eradicating Manual Scavenging

India banned manual scavenging in 1993. More than three decades later, thousands of people – almost all of them Dalits – are still being forced to clean human excreta from dry latrines, open drains, railway tracks, and sewers, often without protective gear, and frequently at the cost of their lives. According to government data, over 1,000 people have died in hazardous sewer-cleaning work since 1993. The official count of identified manual scavengers stands at around 58,000 – but organisations like the Safai Karmachari Andolan put the real figure at over 7 lakh. The gap between law and lived reality is vast, and understanding why requires a clear look at the roadblocks that have made eradication so difficult.

Structural flaws in the 1993 Act
The problem of deliberate underreporting
Weak enforcement and administrative apathy
Absence of mechanisation
Caste-based stigma and social exclusion
Failures in rehabilitation
The judicial push and what still needs to happen

Structural flaws in the 1993 Act

The Employment of Manual Scavengers and Construction of Dry Latrines (Prohibition) Act, 1993 was India’s first central legislation to criminalise manual scavenging. But it was built with significant structural weaknesses from the start. Most critically, Section 3 of the Act stipulated that the prohibition would only apply from the date and in the area notified by the respective State Government. This meant the ban was not automatic or uniform across the country – it depended entirely on state governments issuing individual notifications, which many simply never did.

The Act also originally applied only to six states: Andhra Pradesh, Goa, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Tripura, and West Bengal, along with all Union Territories. Other states had to pass legislative resolutions to adopt it. This patchwork approach left vast regions legally uncovered for years. Even where the Act did apply, penalties were weak – imprisonment of up to one year or a fine of just ₹2,000. More damning still, not a single conviction was secured under the 1993 Act in the twenty years it was in force. That is a striking indictment of both legislative design and enforcement will.

Another critical loophole was the “power to exempt” clause under Section 4 of the 1993 Act, which allowed state governments to release entities from the Act’s provisions under the pretext of administrative necessity. This provision was routinely misused to permit dangerous sanitation work to continue under different labels, shielding employers and local bodies from accountability.

The problem of deliberate underreporting

One of the most persistent and troubling challenges is the systematic underreporting of manual scavenging by state governments. States have consistently read the legal definition of “manual scavenging” narrowly to hide their own failures to implement the law. When workers die cleaning septic tanks or sewer lines – work that is functionally identical to manual scavenging – those deaths are recorded as “accidents during hazardous cleaning” rather than manual scavenging deaths. This definitional sleight of hand lets governments claim, in Parliament and in courts, that no manual scavenging deaths have occurred.

The scale of this misrepresentation is stark. In Karnataka, for instance, the government’s official figure was 2,927 manual scavengers statewide. But when the High Court directed an identification survey covering just 12 districts, 5,080 manual scavengers were already identified – far exceeding the official count for the entire state. The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) itself, in 2021, acknowledged that claims by states of having zero manual scavengers were far from the truth.

This deliberate undercounting has a direct consequence: it allows state governments to avoid conducting identification surveys mandated under the law, deny rehabilitation benefits to eligible workers, and evade financial liability for deaths. In Madhya Pradesh, a survey found over 165 women engaged in manual scavenging in a single district, yet not a single one was included in the list of beneficiaries under the rehabilitation scheme.

Weak enforcement and administrative apathy

Even where laws exist on paper, their enforcement has been deeply inadequate. The 2013 Act – formally titled the Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and Their Rehabilitation Act – was a more comprehensive statute than its 1993 predecessor: it broadened the definition of manual scavenging, mandated rehabilitation, required protective gear for hazardous work, and set penalties of up to ₹5 lakh with imprisonment. But only a handful of cases are ever filed against violators, reflecting an institutional indifference that goes well beyond legislative gaps.

The 2013 Act does not clearly designate a single authority responsible for overseeing rehabilitation, creating accountability gaps that allow the state, districts, and local bodies to pass the responsibility to each other. The Central Monitoring Committee envisaged under the Act was found to be functioning irregularly, as noted by the Supreme Court itself during proceedings in May 2023. District Level Committees and Vigilance Committees mandated under the Act exist on paper in many states but rarely meet or act on complaints.

Railways present a particularly glaring example. Indian Railways is one of the largest institutional employers of manual scavengers and is a government entity. Yet railways have continued to engage workers in manual cleaning despite the very laws that the government itself enacted. Over 1,000 deaths have been reported on railway tracks since 1993 – workers struck by trains while manually cleaning the tracks.

Absence of mechanisation

A major practical barrier to ending manual scavenging is the near-complete absence of mechanised alternatives, especially in smaller towns and rural areas. The 2013 Act envisioned the conversion of dry latrines into sanitary latrines and the mechanisation of sewer cleaning, but actual infrastructure investment has lagged significantly. Septic tanks and sewers in India are typically not designed to accommodate machines, forcing workers to physically descend into them, often without ventilation, safety gear, or training.

The toxic gases inside sewers – primarily hydrogen sulphide – cause workers to lose consciousness within minutes. Asphyxiation deaths are common, and survivors frequently suffer from respiratory diseases, hepatitis, cholera, and tetanus. The government launched the National Action for Mechanised Sanitation Ecosystem (NAMASTE) in 2023-24 with a projected budget of ₹350 crores, aimed at covering around 3,480 Urban Local Bodies and mechanising sanitation work for approximately one lakh sewer and septic tank workers. But the gap between policy announcement and ground-level deployment of equipment remains wide, and rural areas remain largely outside the scheme’s effective reach.

Manual scavenging is not simply an occupational problem – it is a caste-assigned fate. Virtually all manual scavengers belong to Dalit communities, particularly sub-castes like Valmiki, Dom, and Hari. The work is inherited, not chosen. Because caste identity follows workers everywhere, leaving the occupation does not mean escaping the stigma. The eradication of manual scavenging is deeply intertwined with dismantling systemic caste and class divisions that have been reproduced across generations.

This social stigma creates practical obstacles for rehabilitation. Workers who exit the occupation still face discrimination in housing, education, and employment markets. Employers outside the sanitation sector are often unwilling to hire individuals from manual scavenging communities. Children of manual scavengers face discrimination in schools, limiting intergenerational mobility. Women, who account for an estimated 95-98% of those engaged in manual scavenging, face compounded caste and gender-based discrimination – yet most government rehabilitation programmes have historically been designed around male beneficiaries.

Failures in rehabilitation

Even where manual scavengers are identified and exit the practice, rehabilitation has been shallow and underfunded. The Self-Employment Scheme for Rehabilitation of Manual Scavengers (SRMS) provided loans to workers to start alternative livelihoods, but most of the subsidy within the scheme went toward covering bank interest charges. Workers who could not repay were classified as loan defaulters – trapping already marginalised communities in debt bondage rather than freeing them. Additionally, the scheme focused primarily on urban areas, while around 60% of manual scavengers live in rural settings.

Compensation for sewer deaths has been similarly inconsistent. The Supreme Court, in Safai Karamchari Andolan v. Union of India (2014), directed ₹10 lakh in compensation per sewer death since 1993. In Dr. Balram Singh v. Union of India (2023), the Court ordered a comprehensive nationwide survey to identify manual scavengers and held state authorities directly accountable for sewer deaths. Yet payments remain irregular; families of deceased workers frequently have no access to information about their entitlements or how to claim them.

The judicial push and what still needs to happen

Courts have been the most consistent driver of accountability. The Supreme Court’s 2014 judgment declared manual scavenging a violation of Articles 17 and 21 of the Constitution. The 2023 ruling in Dr. Balram Singh went further, holding that forcing workers to enter sewers without protective equipment amounts to forced labour prohibited under Article 23. But courts can direct; they cannot implement. Without a corresponding administrative machinery that actually enforces court orders – with real consequences for non-compliance – judicial directions tend to be honoured in the breach.

What is needed is a multi-pronged approach: strict criminal enforcement against employers and local bodies that continue to engage manual scavengers; mandatory mechanisation with clear timelines and penalties for Urban Local Bodies that fail to adopt machine-based sanitation; gender-sensitive rehabilitation that reaches women who constitute the vast majority of this workforce; caste-awareness-driven social campaigns that attack the cultural roots of the practice; and a centralised, publicly accessible portal to track sewer deaths, compensation disbursements, and rehabilitation progress. The Comptroller and Auditor General’s 2003 report had already concluded that the 1993 Act failed its objectives despite an investment of over ₹600 crores. More than two decades later, the pattern of policy investment without accountability has not fundamentally changed.

Manual scavenging persists not because India lacks laws, but because it lacks the institutional will and social transformation needed to enforce them. It is a crisis kept alive by caste, by administrative convenience, and by a failure to treat the dignity of the most marginalised as a non-negotiable constitutional commitment.

What do you think? Given that not a single conviction was obtained under the 1993 Act in twenty years of its existence, what does this say about the relationship between legislation and enforcement in protecting vulnerable communities? And if rehabilitation schemes have consistently failed to address caste-based exclusion – the root cause of manual scavenging – can financial assistance alone ever be a meaningful solution?

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Table of Contents

Structural flaws in the 1993 Act 🔗

The problem of deliberate underreporting 🔗

Weak enforcement and administrative apathy 🔗

Absence of mechanisation 🔗

Caste-based stigma and social exclusion 🔗

Failures in rehabilitation 🔗

The judicial push and what still needs to happen 🔗

References

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