How is manual scavenging responsibility for the backwardness of a section of society
Answers
Despite technological advancement, there are certain labour class, who to performunhealthy and inhuman practice, facing the problem of untouchability, deprived with their basic rights and living life without dignity. This labour class is known as Manual Scavengers, performinghereditary occupation, unwillingly and forcefully for their empty stomach, sometimes their children also support them to earn livelihood. These categories of labour class are known as 'Bhangi' in our society. Actually, manual scavengers are the people, who take away the human waste (night soil) from insanitary, "dry" toilets. (Commissions, 2011), defined manual scavenging as the practice to remove human excreta manually with the help of brooms and tin plates from dry latrines. Commission explained that, the excreta are loaded into baskets which scavengers carry on their heads to locations sometimes several kilometers from the latrines. (Pathak, 1995 ), mentioned that this inhuman practice is said to have started in the year 1214 in Europe when the first public toilets appeared. (Suzuki, 2009), has explained this task to be one of the most disgraced work.
Answer:Manual scavenging is a term used mainly in India for "manually cleaning, carrying, disposing of, or otherwise handling, human excreta in an insanitary latrine or in an open drain or sewer or in a septic tank or a pit".[1] Manual scavengers usually use hand tools such as buckets, brooms and shovels. The workers have to move the excreta, using brooms and tin plates, into baskets, which they carry to disposal locations sometimes several kilometers away.[2] The practice of employing human labour for cleaning of sewers and septic tanks is also prevalent in Bangladesh and Pakistan.[3][4] These sanitation workers, called "manual scavengers", rarely have any personal protective equipment. The work is regarded as a dehumanizing practice.[5]
The occupation of sanitation work is intrinsically linked with caste in India. All kinds of cleaning are considered lowly and are assigned to people from the lowest rung of the social hierarchy. In the caste-based society, it is mainly the Dalits who work as sanitation workers - as manual scavengers, cleaners of drains, as garbage collectors and sweepers of roads.[6]: 4 It was estimated in 2019 that between 40 to 60 percent of the 6 million households of Dalit sub-castes are engaged in sanitation work.[6]: 5 The most common Dalit caste performing sanitation work is the Valmiki (also Balmiki) caste.[6]: 3
The construction of dry toilets and employment of manual scavengers to clean such dry toilets was prohibited in India in 1993. The law was extended and clarified to include ban on use of human labour for direct cleaning of sewers, ditches, pits and septic tanks in 2013.[7] However, despite the laws, manual scavenging was reported in many states including Maharashtra, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, and Rajasthan in 2014.[7] In 2021, the NHRC observed that eradication of manual scavenging as claimed by state and local governments is far from over.[8]
The term "manual scavenging" differs from the stand alone term "scavenging", which is one of the oldest economic activities and refers to the act of sorting though and picking from discarded waste.[9] Scavengers usually collect from the streets, dumpsites, or landfills. They collect re-usable and recyclable material that can be included into the economy's production process.[10] The practice is reported to exist in cities and towns across the Global South.[11]
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