Sweeping generalisations

Issues of urban poverty, globalisation and the fate of various categories of Indians have recently engaged public attention. In his column...

Issues of urban poverty, globalisation and the fate of various categories of Indians have recently engaged public attention. In his column, entitled The expendable Dalit8217; August 8, Mani Shankar Aiyar has also raised several important issues relating to slums, globalisation and the fate of Dalits. However, in his effort to appear pro-poor, pro-Dalit and anti-globalisation, he confuses several issues.

There is no doubt that our cities and towns are filthy and that something needs to be done about it. Should essential services be provided only when fiats are issued by the Supreme Court? It would be a sad state of affairs if PILs become the only way of ensuring basic needs. Why are our cities and towns not clean? Because our municipalities cannot cope with the amount of garbage generated? Or because our safai karamcharis those on life-time guaranteed government employment do not wish to do the work for which they have been employed? Should we hand over the task to NGOs, private enterprise or global experts?

Before dwelling on these seemingly more attractive options why don8217;t we look at why our municipalities, and the workers they employ, do not work. The main reason is that the employees share in the general public sector malaise of not being required to work in order to earn their salaries. Independent India has succeeded in inculcating the message that as a public sector employee you have rights but no duties; you have a salary but no accountability.

Often the lack of infrastructure or necessary funds is not the real block to why we do not work. Many small towns and cities, where exemplary individuals or NGOs have taken on the task to motivate citizens to clean up, prove this. Aiyar argues that in choosing the privatisation solution to cleaning up the cities, we will be hurting the weakest section of society 8212; the Dalits, who are employed as safai karamcharis. He paints a picture of urban Dalits as suffering under deplorable living conditions from whose mouths globalisation is going to steal the last tukra of roti.

This is where the picture is in need of some correction. Who are the safai karamcharis and what are their socio-economic conditions? Aiyar is at his confused best here. All slum dwellers are not safai karamcharis and vice-versa. A substantial proportion of India8217;s urban informal sector lives and works in slums, that is an unfortunate truism of Indian urbanisation. Safai karamcharis are not necessarily the only ones relegated to slums. Nor are they an army of unemployed rural immigrants. They are urban residents with a reasonably decent foothold in the urban economy. The slum-dwellers, with whom Aiyar seems to be clubbing all safai karmacharis, are rural refugees pursuing a large variety of occupations in the informal sector.

It is an unfortunate reality of post-independence development that we have been unable to disassociate the low castes from their traditional occupationsas a result of which most of the safai karamcharis are Dalits. But researchshows that for most Dalits to be municipal sweepers is upward mobility, not in caste terms but in terms of income and non-caste social status.

These urban jobs represent an escape from the far greater indignities heaped upon them in village society. My study of a slum in Delhi shows that poor Brahmin women who would not be allowed to work outside the home in a village can take up domestic work or other occupations in the city.

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Even more importantly, these jobs afforded the Dalits an automatic avenue to one of the most sought after positions 8212; government employment. A regular, salaried job with pension and sometimes housing is a sought after commodity even in liberalising, globalising India. In a scenario where there is great competition for urban jobs, safai karamcharis combine caste and occupation to manoeuvre the modern public sector employment machine. As a community, the untouchable sweepers are far more politically conscious and organised than other Scheduled Caste communities