The National Crime Records Bureau’s (NCRB) Crime in India report for 2016 released earlier this week has failed to separately show the number of cases registered under The Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and Their Rehabilitation (PEMS) Act of 2013.
The ‘Methodology of Data Collection and Publication’ section of the report states that the cases registered in relation to manual scavenging and ten other Acts, such as the Atomic Energy Act and the Anti-Hijacking Act, have been merged with cases under the existing ‘Other Special and Local Laws (SLLs)’ head, since ‘very few’ cases are reported under these Acts.
The section says that the State and Union Territory-wise details of these SLLs are available on the NCRB website, but no such data is available.
Pointing out the omission, activists say that the NCRB continued to refer only to the old Employment of Manual Scavengers and Construction of Dry Latrines (Prohibition) Act of 1993 in its 2014, 2015 and 2016 reports, while this Act had been replaced by the PEMS Act in 2013.
The 2014 and 15 reports had a separate column for the old 1993 Act, although the number of cases shown under it were surprisingly zero.
In the 2016 report, the only reference to manual scavenging was in the ‘Methodology of Data Collection and Publication’ section which states that cases reported under the 1993 Act have been merged with ‘Other SLLs’ head.
Stating that he was disappointed to see the absence of data and the reference to the 1993 Act, Bezwada Wilson, Magsaysay Award winner and National Convenor of Safai Karmachari Andolan (SKA), said that it showed the scant regard shown by the government in addressing the issue of manual scavenging.
He said that his organisation had submitted multiple representations to the NCRB with the intention of separately capturing the sewage and septic tank deaths. “Instead, they have removed the cases registered under the Act,” he said.
Pointing out that his organisation had recorded 122 sewage and septic tank deaths across India from March to October 2017, he said that the numbers for 2016 would be same, if not more.
P. Madhava Soma Sundaram, Professor, Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Manonmaniam Sundaranar University, said the clubbing of data could not be justified even from an academic point of view.
“The report should be as specific as possible instead of putting everything under ‘Other’ category. Only then will it help researchers from different fields in interpreting the data rightly. The justification that only few cases are reported is unacceptable since even the number ‘0’ tells a story,” he said.
