Scavengers exploited in Gujarat despite law

Even a directive from Gujarat High Court hasn’t speeded up things.

A few months before the Act was adopted by the state, a public interest litigation (PIL) had brought to the court’s notice that Ranpur village (Dhandhuka taluka) was employing people to lift human excreta. The village panchayat denied this, but a court-appointed team found that the practice was on.

Setting a three-month deadline, the court on September 18, 1997 directed thegovernment to prepare time-bound schedules for abolishing the practice in the state; rehabilitating the scavengers; and setting up a high-level committee to oversee implementation of suggestions made by the court-appointed team. That deadline expired on December 18, 1997.

The 11-member committee was set up only on February 12, 1998, with K D Rathod, a deputy secretary in the panchayat & rural housing department as chairman. And what has the committee done? Met only once — four months after it was formed, on June 20.

Further delaying the committee — which seemed in no great hurry itself — was the reply it got to a basic question: how many `dabba’ latrines (from where excreta has to be cleared manually) were there in the state? Almost all the district development officers (DDOs) wrote back that there were none in their area. The committee has asked them to find out once again.

About the other work done by the committee, Rathod was elusive. “We have asked the social welfare department and DDOs toprovide data on the number of safai kamdars engaged in manual scavenging to work out a rehabilitation package,” he said.

So more than a year after the court’s directive, there is no sign of a rehabilitation package for the carriers of human excreta.

Even if the Act was adopted by the state, the enforcement rules needed to eradicate the practice have not yet been framed. Additional chief secretary (social welfare) P K Das said the panchayat and urban development departments had been requested to frame the rules.

The government’s laid-back attitude would have one believe that the practice of employing people to carry human excreta is a thing of the past. Not so.

In some villages in the Surendranagar district, panchayats pay scavengers Rs 50 monthly to carry human excreta, although officially they are paid for cleaning the marketplace. One such village is Bhalgamda, native to State Animal Husbandry Minister Kiritsinh Rana. Another is Rampura.

Villages apart, even an engineering firm in Lambha, on theoutskirts of Ahmedabad, is alleged to be hiring scavengers for clearing excreta. On October 5 Gujarat High Court issued notice to the firm, on a petition filed by 38 workers.

Social worker Valjibhai Patel says the practice continues in parts of Dholka and Dhandhuka talukas, and the Surendranagar district. He also says it is prevalent in the Saurashtra region, given its water shortage, and the feudal system. Water shortage forces people to go for dry latrines, which have to be manually cleaned daily. In the feudal set-up, upper classes find it easy to force Harijans into the practice.

Local self-government bodies are also to blame. They employ Harijans as sweepers, but the real work often is carrying excreta. No wonder, then, that the DDOs denied the employment of people to carry excreta.

This is what worries social workers. Says Stalin K of Drishti, who has made a film on the issue: “The government should stop lying if it is really concerned about the lives of the so-called manual scavengers. Bydenying that the practice exists, the government shows how little interested it is in improving things.”

Lies and delay — a strong enough combination to ensure that in Gandhiji’s Gujarat, some human beings will step into the 21st century carrying human excreta.