Social activist and Ramon Magsaysay awardee Bezwada Wilson questioned the government’s commitment to eradicating manual scavenging in the country by pointing out that its flagship programme, Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM), seems to be counting on the persistence of manual scavenging.
Mr. Wilson, who is the national convenor of Safai Karamchari Andolan (SKA), was delivering a lecture on caste and inequality at Delhi’s Zakir Husain college.
He pointed that 12 crore toilets are being constructed under the SBM without taking into account the fact that they would still need manual scavengers to clean them. “Who will clean the septic tanks in the absence of suction pumps?” he said. “India can build cryogenic engines and send rockets to the moon but we don’t want to invest in technology that removes the need for humans to clean toilets manually.”
Pointing out that “four times as many Indians have already died in septic tanks and underground sewers as have died in terror attacks,” he said, “our government still does not devote half as much time and resources to combat manual scavenging deaths as it does to the issue of terrorism.”
