Manual scavenging

Manual scavenging is a term used mainly in India for "manually cleaning, carrying, disposing of, or otherwise handling, human excreta in an insanitary latrine or in an open drain or sewer or in a septic tank or a pit".^[1][2] Manual scavengers usually use hand tools such as buckets, brooms and shovels. The workers have to move the excreta, using brooms and tin plates, into baskets, which they carry to disposal locations sometimes several kilometers away.^[3] The practice of employing human labour for cleaning of sewers and septic tanks is also prevalent in Bangladesh and Pakistan.^[4][5] These sanitation workers, called "manual scavengers", rarely have any personal protective equipment. The work is regarded as a dehumanizing practice.^[6]

The occupation of sanitation work is intrinsically linked with caste in India. All kinds of cleaning are considered lowly and are assigned to people from the lowest rung of the social hierarchy. In the caste-based society, it is mainly the Dalits who work as sanitation workers - as manual scavengers, cleaners of drains, as garbage collectors and sweepers of roads.^[7]: 4 It was estimated in 2019 that between 40 and 60 percent of the six million households of Dalit sub-castes are engaged in sanitation work.^[7]: 5 The most common Dalit caste performing sanitation work is the Valmiki (also Balmiki) caste.^[7]: 3

The construction of dry toilets and employment of manual scavengers to clean such dry toilets was prohibited in India in 1993. The law was extended and clarified to include ban on use of human labour for direct cleaning of sewers, ditches, pits and septic tanks in 2013.^[8] However, despite the laws, manual scavenging was reported in many states including Maharashtra, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, and Rajasthan in 2014.^[8] In 2021, the NHRC observed that eradication of manual scavenging as claimed by state and local governments is far from over.^[9] Government data shows that in the period 1993–2021, 971 people died due to cleaning of sewers and septic tanks.^[10]

The term "manual scavenging" differs from the stand-alone term "scavenging", which is one of the oldest economic activities and refers to the act of sorting though and picking from discarded waste.^[11] Sometimes called waste pickers or ragpickers, scavengers usually collect from the streets, dumpsites, or landfills. They collect reusable and recyclable material to sell, reintegrating it into the economy's production process.^[12] The practice exists in cities and towns across the Global South.^[13][14]