Manual scavenging continues despite groundbreaking growth in all fields, laments Madras High Court

Chief Justice Sanjay V. Gangapurwala and Justice J. Sathya Narayana Prasad say, “it is the most atrocious and dehumanising practice”

 In 1993, the Parliament enacted the National Commission for Safai Karamchari Act to study, evaluate and monitor the rehabilitation schemes for those involved in manual scavenging.  | Photo Credit: FILE PHOTO

“We boast of groundbreaking growth in all fields. Yet, there exists a community that makes a living by entering manholes and septic tanks, even after the enactment of multiple laws and also several judicial pronouncements against the evil practice of manual scavenging,” the Madras High Court lamented on Monday.

First Division Bench of Chief Justice Sanjay V. Gangapurwala and Justice J. Sathya Narayana Prasad recalled that the Employment of Manual Scavenging and Construction of Dry Latrines (Prohibition) Act, 1993 was enacted 46 years after Independence and it came into force effectively only from 1997.

The intention behind the legislation was “to do away the most atrocious and dehumanizing practice of manual scavenging.” In 1993, the Parliament also enacted the National Commission for Safai Karamchari Act to study, evaluate and monitor the rehabilitation schemes for those involved in manual scavenging.

When the 1993 Act against prohibition of manual scavenging was found to be insufficient to tackle the menace even after two decades since it was enacted, the Parliament came up with yet another legislation titled the Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation Act in 2013.

Apart from the laws and the constitution of a national commission, several committees were also constituted for the purpose and one of them, the Malkani Committee, constituted way back in 1957, itself had made several recommendations on eradicating the degrading practice of manual scavenging.

The Malkani Committee, constituted way back in 1957, had made several recommendations on eradicating the degrading practice of manual scavenging.  | Photo Credit: FILE PHOTO

Further, referring to several Supreme Court verdicts too on the subject, the Division Bench said, despite all this, the Safai Karamachari Andolan had to file the present public interest litigation petition in the High Court in 2017 complaining about the human deaths being reported due to entry into sewers.

Even after the filing of the case and a series of interim orders passed by the High Court from time to time, a number of manual scavenging incidents were brought to the notice of the court and they were testament to the fact that the evil practice was yet to be abolished completely, the Bench said.

Authoring the verdict for the Bench, the Chief Justice quoted B.R. Ambedkar, the chairman of the committee that drafted the Constitution, to have said: “Ours is a battle not for wealth or for power. Ours is a battle for freedom; for reclamation of human personality.”

He also said that in the seminal book ‘Where India Goes: Abandoned Toilets, Stunted Developments and the Costs of Caste,’ its authors Diane Coffey and Dean Spears had demonstrated the fact of germ exposure causing stunted growth in children as a consequence of open defecation and manual scavenging.

Recording its appreciation for Senior Advocate Srinath Sridevan for having argued the PIL petition effectively, the Bench accepted his request to widen the definition of the word ‘sewer’ found in Section 2(g)(q) of the 2013 Act, to include storm water drains too since many people let out their drainage into those drains.

Mr. Sridevan had brought it to the notice of the court that every time a human being was found to be cleaning sewage and the matter was brought to the notice of the court, the local bodies had attempted to escape by claiming that it was a storm water drain and not an underground sewage.

Therefore, the judges read down the definition to mean storm water drains too and also decided to keep the 2017 PIL pending in order to issue continuous directions to the government, whenever it comes across violations of the laws and the court orders against manual scavenging.

They also issued a slew of directions to the State government as well as the local bodies and ordered them to take stringent action against those who engage or employ people for manual scavenging and to ensure that cleaning of sewers, septic tanks and storm water drains was done only through machines.

The Bench insisted effective implementation of the 2013 Act and observed that the compensation to be paid in case of death or injuries due to manual scavenging should be revised every three years. The judges also stressed on providing compassionate employment to the families of the deceased.