On October 2, 2014, the Government of India launched the largest sanitation project in the country’s history — the Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM). With the aim of making India open-defecation free, the project has constructed over 18 crore toilets and designed interventions to encourage “swachh” behaviour. Over the last decade, there has been a proliferation of discourse around SBM, visible in popular media, as well as various SBM activities and contests. The SBM logo adorns currency notes and bureaucratic stationery, SBM toilets pop up on Google Maps, and writing on the city’s walls announces Swachh Survekshan 2024, while multiple events are lined up to mark the 10th anniversary of the mission.
There is one question, however, that doesn’t feature as much in SBM discourse — “Who cleans India?” While SBM-Urban 2.0 proposes recognising sanitation workers as “champion safaimitras” to acknowledge their services, it is critical to engage closely with the challenges workers face so that more structural interventions can be conceived. Drawing from our research and fact-finding surveys on sewer-workers’ issues in Delhi-NCR in the past year, we foreground some of the key challenges that affect sanitation workers.
The absence of job security
Many sanitation workers today are employed on a contractual basis, which is symptomatic of a larger issue in public sector employment in India. As per reports, in Noida, over four thousand sanitation workers staged a protest demanding an end to contractual employment.
This is because of several issues. One of the major problems faced by contractual workers is unfair salary cuts by their contractors. Last month, the national capital set a progressive precedent for other states by revising its minimum wages. The challenge, however, lies with the power structures at work, the stronghold of what the workers call thekedari pratha, that create hurdles for them to get their guaranteed minimum wage. Further, in instances where they are not issued proper appointment letters, identity and health insurance cards, the workers struggle with accessing social security provisions. Most critically, when a contract ends, workers risk losing their jobs, often without prior notice. This absence of job security creates a constant fear of loss of livelihood. What makes matters worse is the lack of accountability with contractors and civic authorities passing on the blame to each other. The contractual system, key to the social infrastructure of urban sanitation today, often sustains labour inequalities and fuels precarity.
Concerns on work safety
Sanitation work often involves a degree of risk as workers toil in toxic environments. In urban spaces, sewer and septic tank workers (SSWs) are especially vulnerable to undignified and unsafe conditions. The Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation Act, 2013 (MS Act) clearly prohibits “hazardous cleaning” of sewers or septic tanks, that is, manual cleaning without protective gear, cleaning devices and safety precautions. SBM-Urban 2.0 also proposes eradication of hazardous entry into sewers and septic tanks through mechanisation of such operations, and provision of protective gear.
However, despite new machinery, workers are often required to manually clean the sludge in machine-inaccessible areas without masks, gloves, respirators, or protective gear. As sewage infrastructure fails to play catch-up with the demands of rapid urbanisation, people often end up relying on private contractors or informal workers.
Notwithstanding the MS Act and SBM, and more recently, the NAMASTE scheme that offers a range of entitlements for SSWs, sewage workers continue to lose their lives under perilous working conditions due to toxic gases, asphyxiation, drowning, and electrocution. According to the Safai Karmachari Andolan, a total of 43 sanitation workers died while cleaning sewers and septic tanks in just the first half of 2024.
Deaths of informal sewage workers have been recorded in not only unsewered but also sewered neighbourhoods. Lack of adequate data on private contractors or informal workers engaged in sewer/septic tank cleaning makes it easier for the contractors, civic authorities and RWAs to evade responsibility. Thus, alongside an urgent need for adequate safety provisions and regulation of privately-contracted sanitation work, there is also a need to address the gaps in urban sewerage planning as well as the gaps in accountability in the contractual system.
The question of dignity
In a recent petition filed to seek eradication of manual scavenging, the division bench of Madras High Court said that sending even a single human being down a sewer is nothing less than “state-sanctioned casteism”, in complete contravention of the constitutional ethos. Such judicial interventions are a positive step towards actualising occupational safety and dignity of sanitation workers.
Historically, scavenging and sanitation work in India, seen as “polluting work”, has been relegated to the so-called “untouchable communities”, particularly the Valmikis and other Dalit sub-castes. Most SSWs even today belong to marginalised caste communities, which shows how caste practices continue to shape occupational structures. In the contemporary moment, this also intersects with the vulnerabilities of heightened contractualisation of work. In challenging these overlapping forms of discrimination, the workers foreground the question of dignity of the individual. When sanitation workers protest and raise demands for work security, identity, safety, they are also demanding dignity for themselves, their work and labour, and a life of true freedom.
Can a discussion on “clean India” be divorced from the rights of those who clean India? It’s time to re-evaluate how programmes and missions have impacted the lives of those who constitute the very backbone of the sanitation infrastructure. If we are to envisage a “swachh Bharat”, it’s imperative to foreground, and not invisibilise, the workers who do the job of cleaning India every day.
Sharma is a PhD Candidate at the Department of Social Anthropology, York University, Toronto and Jhobta is National Co-ordinator of Dalit Adivasi Shakti Adhikar Manch (DASAM)