In 2014, Prime Minister Narendra Modi pledged to clean the “filthiness all around us”, which, according to him, is an obstacle for promoting the tourism that offers jobs to the poorest of the poor. With Swachh Bharat Abhiyan (SBA), there is also a need for making the waste-removal profession caste-neutral.A clean village exists because an ‘unclean’ caste is forced to absorb the ‘filth’ of the village.

Swachh Bharat Abhiyan (SBA)?

• Swachh Bharat Abhiyan (SBA) was a nationwide initiative to clean public spaces.
• It aimed at inspiring the public to voluntarily clean public spaces as a service to the nation.
• The government is resolved to accomplish the vision of a clean India by 2019.
• The campaign initially highlighted images of celebrities “voluntarily” sweeping the streets.
• Concurrently, municipalities began to employ more contractual labourers.

What are the concerns?

• Deaths - The campaign hardly addresses a reworking of the underground sewerage system.
• Many labourers have died recently while cleaning jammed manholes that open into the sewerage system.
• The disturbing fact is that these deaths have a caste pattern.
• In 2017, over 300 cases of such deaths were reported mostly from particular caste groups.
• Role - The campaign burdens the contractual labourer with an ‘exclusive’ right to cleaning public spaces.
• But it makes it a voluntary act for the ‘public’ to not defecate, urinate or litter in random spaces.
• There is a lack of punitive measures to urge public to follow healthy practices.
• Attitude - In India, waste carries the stigma that is attached to pollution and caste.
• It is thus carried on to the process of removal (‘scavenging’) and the occupation (‘scavenger’).
• The waste remover in India is not a professional, like in the West.
• Collection - In the past, municipalities erected bins in common places for the shops and households to dispose of waste.
• Under SBA, these bins were the first to be removed, as it offered door-to-door collection.
• Members from the households now bring unsegregated garbage which is collected by the workers.
• The workers collect them and it is then sent to the composting yard where workers segregate the waste.
• Manually segregating the waste at the landfill compromises their hygiene and health.
• Caste - The door-to-door service has several darker undertones.
• Until they were banned in 1993, dry latrines were emptied through a similar door-to-door service.
• The workers blow whistle to indicate their arrival to the households.
• Not only this, it also announced the presence of a lower caste person.
• This was in order to warn caste Hindus from crossing their paths.
• In the colonial past and even now in some places, toilet locations are planned with caste notions.

What is the Western approach?

• Approach - The Western model aims at removing waste from the public gaze.
• Stopping the spread of disease was the primary intention in the West.
• However, sanitation is now largely an extension of visual aesthetics as well.
• Sanitation now means more the absence of “filthiness all around us”.
• The West introduced technologies to systematically remove waste.
• London - The Londoners experienced the ‘Great Stink’ in 1858.
• The government then realised the need for a holistic sewerage plan that become part of the water infrastructure.
• It aimed at removing filth and treating waste from the river Thames in a sustainable way.
• Soon, the construction of toilets in households and shops became mandatory.

What should India do?

• Similarities between secular SBA and casteist form of manual scavenging are evident, but unnoticed.
• While cleaning is a voluntary ‘service’ for caste Hindus, collecting and disposing waste remains a ‘duty’ for particular castes.
• Thus the stigma attached to sanitary labour, place and waste should be critically addressed.
• Any tangible achievement of a clean India is possible only by caste-neutralising these professions.
• Adoption of advanced technologies in waste management, collection and disposal can go a long way.