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Indian Express
24-05-2025
- Indian Express
Delhi: Regulatory oversight, informal work arrangements flagged in report on deaths of sanitation workers
Deaths of sanitation workers during hazardous sewer and septic tank cleaning operations have continued unabated across India despite a ban on manual scavenging and stringent legal provisions. Their plight was in focus on Friday during a workshop at the Constitution Club of India in Delhi, where rights groups, worker unions, and researchers came together to present a new fact-finding report. The report, compiled and released by the Dalit Adivasi Shakti Adhikar Manch (DASAM), sheds a spotlight on a series of investigations into recent sanitation worker fatalities across urban and rural areas. One of the most recent cases documented was the death of two sanitation workers at a shopping mall in West Delhi earlier this year. The workers were reportedly hired by a private contractor to clean a sewage chamber without any safety gear or training. The report noted that no timely emergency response was available at the site, and rescue efforts were delayed. Such incidents were not isolated, underlined the report, which included multiple case studies from Delhi-NCR — all pointing to a pattern of hazardous working conditions, informal subcontracting arrangements, and poor regulatory oversight. The Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation Act, 2013, bans hazardous manual cleaning of sewers and septic tanks, but the DASAM report showed that the practice continued under informal arrangements. Many workers were hired on a daily wage or contract basis through layers of subcontracting, with no job security, insurance, or safety protocol, as per the findings. Activists called for revamping data collection mechanisms, noting that the National Commission for Safai Karamcharis (NCSK) and local authorities often underreported cases or provided incomplete information. The report recommends better coordination between police, civic bodies, and labour departments to ensure accountability and justice Mohsina, a member of DASAM involved in the documentation process, said that systemic neglect by both municipal bodies and enforcement agencies lay at the heart of the problem. 'Apathy by government agencies as well as police officials had been evident during the follow-up of the incidents. While a few cases did not yield an FIR, some others were claimed to be pending because of incomplete investigations,' she said. The report noted that in many cases, contractors denied formal employment ties, which hampered the legal process and delayed compensation. Hemlata Kansotia, National Convenor, National Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission (NCDRSAW), who has been working on sanitation workers' rights, pointed out that the problem extended beyond fatalities. 'Apart from deaths, health-related complications due to prolonged exposure to harmful gases remained undocumented,' she said, noting that such chronic issues were rarely covered in official reports. 'There was also a gap in the law to tackle this issue,' she added. Kansotia pointed to an urban bias in public perception: 'In cities like Delhi, Mumbai and Chennai, the general notion was that to an extent the problem was resolved, but we were only seeing the visible issues in the city… Apart from this, septic tank-related cases in small cities and villages were invisibilised.' Dharmendra Bhati, President, Municipal Workers Lal Janda Union, emphasised the need for systemic change within public utility bodies. 'Contractual workers needed to be made part of the regular employees and included in the payroll in the Delhi Jal Board,' he said, adding that without formal inclusion, workers remained vulnerable to exploitation and unsafe assignments. The issue also had deep socio-cultural and psychological dimensions. Seema Mathur, professor at Delhi University, pointed out that 'identity' — especially caste and gender — played a key role in how sanitation workers were treated. 'The lack of social security and physiological nuances of the nature of work made it difficult for the female and male workers to affect their daily life,' she said, referring to the often-overlooked psychological toll of such hazardous and stigmatised work. Dr. Sunilam, a veteran social activist, said that despite their essential role, sanitation workers were not prioritised in policymaking. 'The problem persisted due to no equipment, funds or priority given to the sanitation workers and their job,' he said. Highlighting their role during crises, he added, 'It was the farmers and the sanitation workers who were in the forefront, who did not shy away during the pandemic. Yet the public, who did not even step out during such calamities, ostracised them. The inherent solution lay in setting priorities and providing dignity.' He further criticised the prevailing approach to sanitation worker deaths, calling it reactionary. 'In India, the compensation following the death of a sanitation worker was talked about, but nobody talked about how to prevent such deaths in the first place… indicating an indifferent approach.'
Scroll.in
12-05-2025
- Health
- Scroll.in
Swachh Bharat Mission: Caste and contracts in sanitation work
In October 2024, Swachh Bharat Mission, India's largest sanitation project to make the country 'open defecation-free', turned 10. The project constructed over a hundred million toilets and launched behavioural change initiatives encouraging toilet use and hygiene practices to promote 'cleanliness'. In response to the increasing load on sewerage systems due to rising urban density, the mission's urban component, SBM-U 2.0, focuses on improving sewage management and developing sewage treatment plants to create a sustainable and comprehensive urban sanitation system. However, these interventions neglect the issues of sewage workers, who constitute the backbone of urban sewage infrastructures. This is seen in the rising contractualisation in sanitation work –outsourcing to private entities or third-party agencies, often with exploitative conditions for workers – that draws upon and reproduces historical inequalities of caste and class in urban India. This piece draws upon the author's doctoral research on sewage work and infrastructure in Delhi, alongside fact-finding surveys on sewer and septic tank deaths in 2024, conducted as part of a team of researchers and activists organised by Dalit Adivasi Shakti Adhikar Manch, a social and advocacy forum for sewer workers' rights in the city. It addresses two forms of contractualisation: privately contracting sewage work to informal workers or casual labourers, and the rising contractualisation in civic bodies that compounds caste inequality for sewer workers mostly belonging to marginalised caste communities. Privately contracted sewage work Despite massive investments in Swachh Bharat Mission, over the last decade, at least 453 people have died while cleaning sewers and septic tanks in India; other data suggests around 377 deaths between 2019 and 2023, and over 72 deaths between 2013 and 2024 in Delhi alone. In May 2024, two informal sanitation workers died after allegedly inhaling poisonous fumes while cleaning the private septic chamber of a house in a well-sewered colony in Noida. Two more lost their lives after being forced to enter a clogged sewer without protective equipment or supervision at a mall in northwest Delhi. They were contractually employed as housekeeping staff by a private company to which the mall had outsourced cleaning and maintenance operations. In October 2024, three labourers died while cleaning a sewer at a construction site in southwest Delhi, leading to investigations on the role of the private construction company and the site owner, a public sector undertaking company. In the last five months, there have been at least three more incidents of sewer and septic tank deaths in Delhi. The Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation Act, 2013, prohibits 'hazardous cleaning' of sewers, septic tanks or manual cleaning without mandated protective gear, cleaning devices and safety precautions. These cases persist despite the law, pointing to the absence of municipal regulation and accountability in privately contracted sewage work and exploitative work arrangements that may force workers to undertake hazardous cleaning without requisite training, supervision and protective gear. They also reveal a culture of negligence as housing colonies, private companies and state corporations summon untrained informal workers to clean sewers or septic tanks without accounting for safety risks. As gathered from fact-finding surveys, at times, there is an institutional reluctance in criminalising these cases under the Act; they are often seen as 'accidental'. Many of these workers were either poor migrant or informal workers, who mostly belonged to marginalised caste or class communities. Many worked as daily-wage labourers, guards or housekeeping staff, and had to take up a range of sewage work without prior experience due to desperate economic circumstances or fear of losing their jobs. Privately contracted sewage work, thus, draws upon pre-existing social and economic inequalities and vulnerabilities. It also reproduces the cycle of inequality for the workers' families that are forced to deal with the loss of their loved one, also an earning member, and settle for less than the mandated compensation offered stealthily by contractors, due to lack of resources to fight a legal battle. To counteract this exploitation and lack of regulation, few ground activists suggested during field discussions that sewage work be undertaken by the civic body as civic body workers and their supervisors are more experienced and the civic body can be held accountable for any lapses or malpractices. Contractualisation in civic bodies Sewer workers employed with civic bodies, such as the Delhi Jal Board – the nodal state agency responsible for water and sewerage in the city – emphasise this work is not only dangerous but also demands a certain technique. Skills are accrued through knowledge passed down from senior to junior workers, at times their only safeguard against the risks of sewer work, especially in earlier years when workers had to enter deep sewers. The impact of the 2013 Act started emerging a few years after its implementation when new machines for sewer cleaning, though still inadequate, were introduced. The machines, alongside the pressure on civic bodies to ensure compliance with the law, significantly reduced sewer deaths in the civic body. But just as one critical fight for workers' safety and dignity was being fought, there emerged a new challenge: of contractualisation. Today, a large number of sewer workers are employed on a contractual basis with civic bodies. In recent years, workers have protested this due to issues such as unfair salary cuts by the contractor, no identity cards and lack of access to social security provisions such as health insurance. Further, once a contract ends, there is a constant fear of losing their source of livelihood. The civic body and contractors pass the buck, revealing accountability gaps in the system. The contractual system, key to the social infrastructure of urban sanitation today, sustains labour inequalities and creates precarity. Further, it exacerbates and compounds the inequality of caste. Historically, sanitation work in India, seen as 'polluting work', has been relegated to marginalised caste communities, particularly the Valmikis and other Dalit sub-castes. Even today, most sewer workers belong to these communities, showing how caste ideologies and practices continue to shape occupational structures. Caste also operates through a deep-seated public apathy towards what goes down the drain with the expectation that someone will do the 'dirty work' of unclogging blocked sewer lines. While 'behavioural change' is Swachh Bharat Mission's key focus area, it rarely targets the casteist foundations of civil society. Permanent employment in the civic body cannot alone dismantle these structures of caste inequality. However, it offered some safety net: job security, fixed salary and allowances, retirement benefits and health insurance. Contractualisation not only deepens the workers' economic vulnerability but also reinforces the social marginalisation rooted in caste. The Swachh Bharat Mission movement has seldom grappled with questions of work, labour, contract and caste. A focus on them not only reveals how relations of caste and contract sustain urban infrastructures but also the gaps in sanitation programmes and the need for interventions that guarantee safety, security and dignity to the sanitation workforce. Aarushie Sharma is a PhD candidate in Social Anthropology at York University, Toronto. This research has been supported by the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), Ottawa, Canada, and York University's Dissertation Fieldwork Fellowship.
