Unveiling Manual Scavenging: A Dark Legacy of Social Inequality

In independent India, there are occupations chosen out of aspiration – and then there are occupations imposed by birth. Manual scavenging belongs firmly to the second category. It is the practice of manually cleaning, carrying, and disposing of human excreta from dry latrines, open drains, septic tanks, and sewers – often without any protective gear whatsoever. Banned by law since 1993, it persists as a grim reminder that legal prohibitions alone cannot dismantle centuries of caste-based social engineering. To understand why this practice endures, and why it matters so deeply to Indian law and human rights discourse, we must first look honestly at what manual scavenging is, who bears its burden, and what it costs them.

What does “manual scavenging” actually mean?
The caste roots of the practice
The gendered dimension: who actually does this work?
The health toll: what this work does to the human body
The economic trap: wages and debt bondage
Social stigma: the invisible prison
Why does the practice persist despite being banned?
The road to reform

What does “manual scavenging” actually mean?

Manual scavenging is defined under the Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation Act, 2013 as the work of manually cleaning, disposing, or handling human excreta from insanitary latrines, open drains, railway tracks, or other premises notified by the government. The earlier Employment of Manual Scavengers and Construction of Dry Latrines (Prohibition) Act, 1993 first gave it a statutory definition, describing a manual scavenger as a person employed to manually carry human excreta. In practice, this means workers use basic hand tools – thin boards, buckets, brooms, and wicker baskets – to collect waste and carry it, often on their heads, to disposal sites sometimes several kilometres away.

A dry latrine is a toilet without a water seal or connection to a sewage system – essentially a pit or a bucket arrangement where excreta must be physically removed by hand. These are distinct from modern flush toilets. The continued existence of dry latrines in rural areas, railway tracks, and urban fringes is what keeps manual scavenging alive as a practice. Notably, Indian Railways alone maintained over 2.96 lakh dry toilets, making it historically the single largest institutional driver of manual scavenging.

The caste roots of the practice

Manual scavenging does not happen to random individuals. It happens to specific communities – and that specificity is not accidental. Rooted in Brahminical notions of ritual purity and pollution, the caste system assigned the most “polluting” tasks – handling waste, carcasses, and bodily matter – to communities placed at the very bottom of the social hierarchy. The workers have traditionally come from sub-castes of the Dalit community: Valmikis in North India, Mehtars in Gujarat and Maharashtra, and Pakhis in Andhra Pradesh.

The numbers confirm this starkly. Government data reveals that an overwhelming 97% of manual scavengers in India are Dalits, with approximately 42,594 belonging to Scheduled Castes. A 2024 report by The Hindu found that 92% of workers cleaning urban sewers and septic tanks come from SC, ST, or OBC groups. This is not coincidence – it is the caste system operating as an occupational assignment.

Dr. B.R. Ambedkar, himself from a Dalit community, had a sharp critique of this structure. While Gandhi glorified the work of sanitation as sacred service, Ambedkar identified scavenging as a forced caste occupation – one carried out not by choice, but by the total absence of any alternative. He described the caste system not as a division of labour but as a division of labourers, where human beings are assigned degrading roles by birth and kept there by social and economic coercion.

The gendered dimension: who actually does this work?

Manual scavenging has a clear and overlooked gender dimension. An estimated 1.3 million Dalits in India – the majority of them women – are employed as manual scavengers, cleaning dry latrines and open drains. The division of labour within the practice itself reflects both caste and gender hierarchies: cleaning private dry latrines is predominantly done by women, while men handle sewer and septic tank cleaning, which pays slightly better because it involves municipal employment.

Women engaged in this work are known by different names in different regions – “dabbu-wali” in Bengal, “balti-wali” in Kanpur, “thottikar” in Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka – names derived from the tools they carry. They receive minimal wages, often paid not in money but in leftover food or old clothing. Many work under informal arrangements with no contract, no fixed wage, and no legal protection. Beyond the physical dangers, they face triple discrimination based on caste, gender, and class – a concept well-recognised in sociological literature on intersectionality – and remain vulnerable to harassment and violence with little access to legal redress.

The health toll: what this work does to the human body

The health consequences of manual scavenging are severe and cumulative. Workers are directly exposed to human excreta, toxic gases – including hydrogen sulphide, methane, and ammonia – and dangerous pathogens. Manual scavengers face high risk of contracting cholera, typhoid, hepatitis, tuberculosis, and various respiratory infections. Chronic skin diseases, permanent hair loss, eye ailments, and rashes are also commonly reported among those who have worked in this occupation over years.

Deaths are not rare. According to official government data, hazardous sewer cleaning claimed 339 lives between 2018 and 2023 alone. Government data from 1993 to 2021 recorded 971 deaths due to sewer and septic tank cleaning. These are only official figures – activists and civil society organisations consistently argue that the true numbers are significantly higher due to systematic underreporting. In a landmark 2023 ruling in Dr. Balram Singh v. Union of India, the Supreme Court ordered ₹10 lakh compensation per sewer death, holding state authorities directly accountable.

Beyond the physical, the psychological damage is profound. Workers report anxiety, depression, and chronic low self-esteem – consequences of daily exposure to degrading conditions compounded by the social stigma attached to their occupation. Studies have also documented higher rates of substance abuse among manual scavengers, often as a coping response to the trauma and social rejection they endure.

The economic trap: wages and debt bondage

Pay for manual scavenging is not just low – it is often legally indefensible. A study by TERI found wages ranging between ₹40 to ₹100 for cleaning around 50 dry toilets, with a maximum of ₹500 to ₹1,000 for cleaning drainage lines – far below any minimum wage standard. Some workers receive no cash payment at all, only food or old clothes from upper-caste households they serve. The International Dalit Solidarity Network has documented instances of workers earning as little as one rupee a day.

This financial precarity creates debt bondage. Manual scavengers frequently borrow money from employers or local moneylenders for essentials – medical care, food, social obligations like weddings. Their wages are too low to repay these loans, and so they remain economically tethered to the occupation. With no collateral, no credit history, and limited access to banking, they have no pathway out through conventional financial means. The Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation Act, 2013 provides a one-time cash assistance of ₹40,000 for rehabilitation – an amount far below even a single year’s minimum wage for low-income households in India.

Even when manual scavengers leave the occupation, the stigma follows. Their caste identity marks them in their communities. Neighbours avoid them, landlords refuse to rent to them, their children face discrimination in schools, and employers in other sectors turn them away. As one former manual scavenger from Uttar Pradesh told researchers: her government-listed rehabilitation never materialised, and she found herself without work – because everyone in surrounding villages still saw her as “born to do this work.”

This social exclusion is not incidental – it is structural. Manual scavenging has been called the worst surviving symbol of untouchability, a practice Article 17 of the Indian Constitution expressly abolishes. The practice also implicates Article 21 (right to life and dignity), Article 14 (equality before law), and Article 23 (prohibition of forced labour). In the 2014 judgment Safai Karamchari Andolan v. Union of India, the Supreme Court held that manual scavenging violated Articles 17 and 21, and directed its complete eradication – a direction that, more than a decade later, has still not been fully implemented.

Why does the practice persist despite being banned?

The 1993 Act prohibited manual scavenging. The 2013 Act extended and strengthened that prohibition, added rehabilitation provisions, and criminalised employment of manual scavengers. The Supreme Court has intervened repeatedly. And yet, as of recent government data, only 508 of 766 districts in India have declared themselves manual-scavenging free – and even those declarations are disputed by activists and researchers on the ground.

Several structural problems explain this gap. First, the legal definition itself has loopholes: the 2013 Act excludes workers who use “protective gear as notified by the government,” which has allowed employers – including the Railways – to provide basic gloves and masks and claim legal compliance. The Act also fails to cover sewer and septic tank workers under the same framework as dry latrine cleaners, creating an artificial legal divide between two equally hazardous groups. Second, rehabilitation has failed in practice – no specific authority was assigned to oversee it under the 1993 Act, and under the 2013 Act, implementation remains deeply patchy. Third, state governments routinely underreport the extent of the practice to avoid accountability. Fourth, and most fundamentally, as long as dry latrines and unmechanised sewers exist, someone will be pressed into cleaning them – and caste ensures that “someone” is almost always a Dalit.

A 2024 peer-reviewed study in the Journal of Infrastructure, Policy and Development concluded that laws against manual scavenging have failed not because of poor design alone, but because of administrative apathy, inadequate rehabilitation support, and the continued prevalence of dry latrines. The study emphasised that ending this practice requires not just enforcement, but a genuine transformation in sanitation infrastructure and social attitudes – simultaneously.

The road to reform

India is not without initiatives aimed at addressing this crisis. The NAMASTE scheme (National Action for Mechanised Sanitation Ecosystem) seeks 100% mechanisation of sewer work and mandates identification and profiling of all septic tank and sewer workers, along with occupational training and enrolment under Ayushman Bharat health insurance. Technological tools such as sewer-cleaning robots – like the Bandicoot robot – represent promising alternatives to human entry into sewers. However, their adoption remains uneven and insufficient in scale.

The Supreme Court’s 2023 ruling in Dr. Balram Singh v. Union of India directed all states and Union Territories to phase out manual sewer cleaning completely, issued guidelines for contractors to ensure no human entry into sewers, and ordered a nationwide survey to identify remaining manual scavengers. The Court also stressed that families of all individuals who died in sewer-related work since 1993 must be identified and compensated. Whether these directions translate into reality depends entirely on political will and administrative commitment – two resources that have historically been in short supply on this issue.

What is clear is that manual scavenging is not simply a sanitation problem. It is a human rights crisis rooted in caste, sustained by poverty, and perpetuated by institutional indifference. The law has repeatedly declared it illegal and unconstitutional. What lags behind is the social and political resolve to match that declaration with action on the ground.

What do you think? If manual scavenging has been legally banned for over three decades and declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court multiple times, what does its continued existence say about the relationship between law and social change in India? And should rehabilitation schemes be made a legal right with enforceable timelines, rather than discretionary government programmes?

References

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Table of Contents

What does “manual scavenging” actually mean? 🔗

The caste roots of the practice 🔗

The gendered dimension: who actually does this work? 🔗

The health toll: what this work does to the human body 🔗

The economic trap: wages and debt bondage 🔗

Social stigma: the invisible prison 🔗

Why does the practice persist despite being banned? 🔗

The road to reform 🔗

References

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