Three Laws, Zero Convictions: India’s Shame Continues
India has banned manual scavenging three times. In 1993, in 2013, and through multiple Supreme Court directives that have explicitly declared the practice a violation of Article 21 of the Constitution — the right to life with dignity. Yet, in 2024 alone, at least 116 sanitation workers died while cleaning sewers and septic tanks. By mid-2025, another 42 had perished. The National Commission for Safai Karamcharis (NCSK) records 1,313 sewer and septic tank deaths between 1993 and June 2025. The actual number, as activists consistently point out, is likely far higher.
This is not a failure of law. It is a failure of will — a systemic, institutional, and deeply caste-driven refusal to treat certain human beings as human beings. Manual scavenging in India is not merely an occupational hazard. It is an apparatus of caste oppression that has survived democracy, legislation, and constitutional guarantees.
Manual scavenging refers to the practice of manually cleaning, carrying, disposing of, or handling human excreta from dry latrines, sewers, septic tanks, drains, and railway tracks. Under the Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation Act, 2013, the definition extends to any person engaged in cleaning sewers or septic tanks without protective equipment and without the use of mechanised cleaning devices.
The work takes several forms:
- Dry latrine cleaning: Removing human waste by hand from latrines that lack a flush or water-seal system, carrying it in baskets on the head to disposal sites. Though declining, this practice has not been fully eliminated, particularly in rural areas.
- Sewer and manhole cleaning: Workers descend into narrow, toxic manholes — often without any protective gear — to clear blockages with their bare hands. They are exposed to methane, hydrogen sulphide, carbon monoxide, and other lethal gases.
- Septic tank cleaning: Workers enter residential and commercial septic tanks to manually empty them when suction machines are unavailable or too expensive for the municipality to deploy.
- Railway track cleaning: Indian Railways has historically been one of the largest employers of manual scavengers. Workers clean faecal matter from open-discharge railway toilets along thousands of kilometres of track.
The work is performed without gloves, masks, oxygen tanks, or any form of safety equipment. Workers enter toxic spaces wearing nothing more than their everyday clothes. Many do not come out alive.
Manual scavenging in India is not merely an economic activity. It is a caste-designated occupation. The overwhelming majority of manual scavengers belong to Dalit communities — specifically, sub-castes historically assigned sanitation and waste-disposal duties under the caste system. Communities such as the Valmikis, Helas, Doms, and Bhangis have been trapped in this occupation for generations, not by choice but by the rigid social hierarchy that assigns them this work at birth.
An estimated 98 percent of manual scavengers are from Scheduled Caste communities. Among them, 98 percent of those engaged in dry latrine cleaning are women and girls — earning as little as Rs 200-500 per month, or being paid in leftover food and old clothes.
Safai Karmachari Andolan estimates
The intergenerational nature of this entrapment is critical to understanding why the practice persists. Children born into manual scavenging families face social ostracism, limited access to education, and intense community pressure to continue the family occupation. The stigma attached to the work extends beyond the workplace — manual scavengers and their families are frequently denied entry into temples, segregated in housing, and excluded from community wells and public spaces. Much like child labour in India, this is a form of inherited exploitation where vulnerable populations — including children — are trapped in cycles of deprivation that laws alone have failed to break.
This is not a labour rights issue alone. It is the continuation of untouchability — a practice explicitly abolished under Article 17 of the Indian Constitution. The Supreme Court, in its 2014 judgment in Safai Karamchari Andolan v. Union of India, explicitly recognised manual scavenging as a manifestation of untouchability and a violation of Articles 14, 17, 21, and 23 of the Constitution.
Getting accurate data on manual scavenging in India is itself a political act. The government’s numbers consistently undercount the scale of the problem, while activists and independent surveys suggest a crisis many times larger than official records admit.
Two national surveys were conducted by the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment — one in 2013 and another beginning in 2018. As of February 2021, these surveys identified 58,098 eligible manual scavengers across India. Uttar Pradesh accounted for the largest share, with 32,473 identified manual scavengers — roughly 56 percent of the national total. Maharashtra followed with 6,325, Uttarakhand with 4,988, Assam with 3,921, Karnataka with 2,927, and Rajasthan with 2,673.
| Source | Count | Scope |
|---|---|---|
| Government survey (2018-2021) | 58,098 | 194 districts, 18 states |
| Safai Karmachari Andolan estimate | 770,000+ | Nationwide |
| SECC 2011 (Maharashtra alone) | 65,000+ households | Rural Maharashtra only |
The 2018 survey covered only 194 districts in 18 states and excluded sewer cleaners and urban areas entirely. This methodological choice alone guaranteed a massive undercount. Contract workers, daily-wage labourers hired by private agencies, and those working in unregistered arrangements were systematically left out of the count.
Each of the 58,098 identified manual scavengers was paid a one-time cash assistance of Rs 40,000. For a lifetime of degradation, toxic exposure, social exclusion, and generational trauma, the Indian state offered forty thousand rupees.
The most damning indictment of India’s failure to eliminate manual scavenging is the death toll. According to NCSK data, 1,313 sanitation workers have died while cleaning sewers and septic tanks between 1993 and June 2025. A Parliamentary Standing Committee report tabled in August 2025 documented 377 sanitation worker deaths during hazardous sewer and septic tank cleaning between 2019 and 2023 alone.
In 2024, at least 116 workers died. In the first half of 2025, 42 more deaths were recorded. Delhi emerged as the worst-affected city in 2025, with six sewer-related deaths by September — and none of the victims’ families had received compensation at the time of reporting. Gujarat, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Haryana, and Punjab followed closely, each recording three incidents.
The causes of death are consistent and preventable:
- Toxic gas inhalation: Hydrogen sulphide, methane, and carbon monoxide accumulate in sewers and septic tanks. Workers descend without gas detectors or breathing apparatus and lose consciousness within seconds.
- Asphyxiation: Oxygen levels in confined sewer spaces can drop to lethal levels. Workers suffocate before they can call for help.
- Drowning in sewage: Workers lose consciousness from gas exposure and drown in the sewage they were sent to clean.
- Rescue deaths: Fellow workers, seeing a colleague collapse, often descend without equipment to attempt rescue — and die themselves. Multiple-fatality incidents are disturbingly common.
The absence of safety equipment is not an accident. It is a policy failure compounded by caste indifference. The Parliamentary Standing Committee found that the government’s scheme for distributing personal protective equipment (PPE) to sanitation workers had achieved only 54 percent coverage. In most states, workers remain entirely unprotected.
According to NCSK data on sewer death compensation, payments have been made in only 70 of 123 tracked cases. The NCSK list includes 55 deceased workers whose legal heirs could not be traced “despite best efforts” — meaning their families received nothing.
The Supreme Court mandated Rs 10 lakh compensation per sewer death in 2014, later revised to Rs 30 lakh in 2023. Yet the gap between mandate and reality remains vast.
India’s legislative framework against manual scavenging is, on paper, among the strongest in the world for addressing caste-based occupational discrimination. Three major legal interventions have targeted this practice:
The Employment of Manual Scavengers and Construction of Dry Latrines (Prohibition) Act, 1993
This was the first national law to prohibit the employment of manual scavengers and the construction of dry latrines. However, the Act was largely ineffective. The Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) reported in 2003 that the National Scheme for Liberation and Rehabilitation of Scavengers had failed due to unspent funds and incoherent rehabilitation strategies. The Act remained inoperative for approximately three and a half years after enactment and was not uniformly enforced by states. Not a single conviction was secured under this law.
The Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation Act, 2013
This legislation replaced the 1993 Act and significantly expanded its scope. It prohibited not only the employment of manual scavengers for dry latrine cleaning but also the hazardous cleaning of sewers and septic tanks without protective equipment. The Act criminalised the employment of manual scavengers with penalties including imprisonment up to two years and fines up to Rs 2 lakh. It also mandated rehabilitation measures including one-time cash assistance, skill development training, educational scholarships for children, subsidised housing, and loans for alternative livelihoods. Despite its comprehensive provisions, enforcement has remained abysmally weak. In more than a decade since its enactment, convictions under this law remain vanishingly rare.
Supreme Court Directions: Safai Karamchari Andolan v. Union of India (2014)
The landmark judgment delivered by a bench comprising Chief Justice P. Sathasivam, Justice Ranjan Gogoi, and Justice N.V. Ramana was unequivocal. The Court declared manual scavenging a clear violation of Articles 17 and 21 of the Constitution and directed its complete eradication. The Court issued several critical directions: full implementation of the 2013 Act; identification and compensation of Rs 10 lakh for all families of persons who died in sewerage work since 1993; criminalisation of entering sewer lines without safety gear even in emergencies; comprehensive rehabilitation for identified manual scavengers; a time-bound strategy by Indian Railways to end manual scavenging on tracks; and support for dignified livelihood for safai karamchari women. In 2023, through Dr. Balram Singh v. Union of India, the Supreme Court revised compensation to Rs 30 lakh per sewer death for incidents occurring post-1993.
In January 2025, the Supreme Court issued an absolute ban on manual scavenging in six metropolitan cities, including Delhi. Yet, sewer deaths in Delhi continued unabated through 2025. The persistent gap between law and enforcement mirrors challenges seen across India’s governance landscape — much as the Right to Information Act promised transparency and accountability but continues to face implementation hurdles at every level of government.
The persistence of manual scavenging despite comprehensive legal prohibition reveals a systemic architecture of caste-based indifference that operates at every level of governance and society.
The caste system as infrastructure: Manual scavenging survives because the caste system provides a permanent, captive labour force. When a municipality needs a sewer cleaned, it does not recruit through formal channels — it sends for members of designated castes who have “always” done this work. The caste system provides both the labour supply and the social justification for why certain people should do this work. This is not a market failure; it is a social system functioning exactly as designed.
Municipal indifference: Urban local bodies across India continue to employ manual scavengers, often through layers of contractual arrangements that obscure accountability. When workers die, municipalities deny direct employment relationships. When activists demand mechanisation, municipalities cite budget constraints. The result is a system where the cheapest option — sending a Dalit worker into a toxic sewer without equipment — remains the default.
Poor enforcement: Despite two laws and Supreme Court orders, enforcement remains almost non-existent. No significant number of prosecutions have been filed against employers of manual scavengers. Municipal officials, contractors, and private employers face no meaningful consequences for sending workers into sewers without safety equipment. The law exists; its enforcement does not.
Economic compulsion: Manual scavengers, trapped by caste, lack of education, and social exclusion, often have no alternative livelihood. The Rs 40,000 one-time assistance and skill training stipend of Rs 3,000 per month are inadequate to facilitate genuine occupational transition. Without sustained economic support and social acceptance in alternative occupations, workers return to the only work available to them.
Contractualisation and invisibility: The increasing use of private contractors for municipal sanitation work has created additional layers of invisibility. Workers hired through contractors are not counted as municipal employees, are not provided safety equipment, and are not covered by government insurance schemes. When they die, their deaths may not even be recorded as sewer deaths.
Despite the overwhelming scale of the problem, several interventions offer genuine hope for the elimination of manual scavenging.
Safai Karmachari Andolan: The Movement That Would Not Be Silenced
Founded in 1994 by Bezwada Wilson, S.R. Sankaran, and Paul Diwakar, the Safai Karmachari Andolan (SKA) has been the most significant force in the fight against manual scavenging in India. Wilson, himself born into a manual scavenging family in Karnataka’s Kolar Gold Fields, began his activism in 1986 when he filed complaints about dry latrines in his town and threatened legal action when authorities ignored him.
SKA has grown into a network of 7,000 members across 500 districts. The organisation claims to have liberated approximately 300,000 of an estimated 600,000 scavengers. Wilson was awarded the Ramon Magsaysay Award in 2016, with the citation recognising “his moral energy and prodigious skill in leading a grassroots movement to eradicate the degrading servitude of manual scavenging in India, reclaiming for the Dalits the human dignity that is their natural birthright.”
“I dedicate this award to all the women who burnt their baskets to reject manual scavenging and all those who lost their lives while cleaning the sewer lines.”
Bezwada Wilson, Ramon Magsaysay Award acceptance speech, 2016
SKA was instrumental in the drafting of the 2013 Act, the filing of the landmark petition in Safai Karamchari Andolan v. Union of India, and continues to push for genuine enforcement and accountability. Wilson has consistently emphasised that manual scavenging is not a sectarian Dalit problem — it is a crisis of Indian society itself.
Bandicoot: The Robot That Replaces Human Descent
GenRobotics, a Kerala-based startup founded by engineers Arun George, Nikhil NP, Rashid K, and Govind MK, developed the Bandicoot robot — a robotic sewer-cleaning system designed to eliminate the need for human entry into manholes entirely. The robot consists of a stand unit and a robotic drone unit that is lowered into the manhole. Using high-resolution cameras, hydraulic arms with multi-degree flexibility, and a bucket system for waste collection, Bandicoot can clear a manhole in 45 minutes — work that would take three human workers two hours.
Critically, GenRobotics has not merely replaced workers with machines. The company trains former manual scavengers to operate the robots, transforming them from labourers performing degrading work into skilled technicians operating advanced machinery. The company reports having rehabilitated more than 100 former manual scavengers through this approach.
Bandicoot robots are now operational in 19 states and 3 Union Territories. The technology has been certified as the “Most Promising Innovative Solution” under the AMRUT scheme for eliminating human entry into sewer systems. Prime Minister Narendra Modi and UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres attended the launch of an early Bandicoot model in 2018.
Sulabh International: Toilet Conversion at Scale
Founded in 1970 by Dr. Bindeshwar Pathak, Sulabh International pioneered the two-pit pour-flush toilet — a low-cost sanitation technology that eliminates the need for dry latrines and, consequently, for manual scavengers to clean them. Sulabh has converted dry latrines into pour-flush toilets in 1,749 towns, built approximately 160,835 household toilets and over 10,641 public toilet complexes, and constructed facilities at 36 railway stations used by approximately 20 million people daily.
Beyond infrastructure, Sulabh has rehabilitated former manual scavengers through vocational training programmes. In towns like Alwar and Tonk in Rajasthan, women who previously worked as manual scavengers were trained as beauticians or in food processing, sewing, and embroidery. Dr. Pathak, who passed away in August 2023, received the Padma Bhushan in 1991 and the Gandhi Peace Prize in 2016 for his contributions.
State responses to manual scavenging vary dramatically across India. As of December 2024, 249 of India’s 766 districts have declared themselves “manual scavenger-free” — a designation that activists view with deep scepticism given the persistent undercount of workers.
The NCSK has recorded deaths from only 13 of India’s 28 states and 7 Union Territories. Haryana reports the highest number of sewer deaths, followed by Uttar Pradesh, Delhi, and Gujarat. The remaining states either have no reporting mechanisms in place or choose not to report.
In December 2024, the government informed Parliament that it had developed a mobile application and portal for capturing data on manual scavengers. The NAMASTE (National Action for Mechanised Sanitation Ecosystem) scheme, launched in 2023-24 with an allocation of Rs 97.41 crore, replaced the earlier Self Employment Scheme for Rehabilitation of Manual Scavengers (SRMS). The scheme aims to achieve zero fatalities in sanitation work, ensure no sanitation worker comes in direct contact with human waste, and create conditions for all sanitation work to be performed by skilled workers using machines.
The government’s official position, as stated in Parliament by Minister Ramdas Athawale, is that manual scavenging has been eliminated. The Safai Karmachari Andolan and numerous independent organisations categorically dispute this claim.
The path from law to lived reality requires action on multiple fronts simultaneously:
Genuine enforcement with accountability: Not a single employer of manual scavengers should escape prosecution. Municipal officials, contractors, and private employers who send workers into sewers without equipment must face criminal consequences. The law provides for imprisonment up to two years — it needs to be used.
Mandatory mechanisation with deadlines: Every municipality in India must be required to adopt mechanised sewer-cleaning technology within a defined timeframe. Technologies like Bandicoot have proven their viability. Budget constraints cannot justify the continued sacrifice of Dalit lives. The central government must fund the transition and hold states accountable for compliance.
Honest enumeration: The government must conduct a comprehensive, transparent survey that counts all manual scavengers — including sewer cleaners, contract workers, and those in urban areas. The current methodology, which excluded entire categories of workers and covered fewer than one-third of India’s districts, produces numbers designed to minimise the problem rather than measure it.
Meaningful rehabilitation: Rs 40,000 is not rehabilitation. It is an insult. Genuine rehabilitation requires sustained income support during occupational transition, guaranteed employment in dignified work, housing, educational support for children through college, health insurance covering occupational diseases, and social programmes to combat the stigma that follows former manual scavengers into their new lives.
Compensation without barriers: The Supreme Court-mandated compensation of Rs 30 lakh per sewer death must be paid automatically and promptly to every affected family. The current system, where families must navigate bureaucratic processes to prove their loved one died in a sewer, is inhumane. The burden of proof must be on the state, not on grieving families.
Confronting caste: Ultimately, manual scavenging will not end until India confronts the caste system that sustains it. No amount of legislation can overcome a social structure that designates certain human beings as fit only for handling other people’s waste. This requires sustained social reform, education, media engagement, and political will of a kind that has been conspicuously absent.
In January 2025, the Supreme Court of India issued an absolute ban on manual scavenging in six metropolitan cities. Within months, workers continued to die in the sewers of those same cities. This gap — between the law as written and life as lived — is the central tragedy of manual scavenging in India.
Every sewer death is a policy choice. Every worker sent into a manhole without a mask is a statement about whose life matters. Every survey that undercounts manual scavengers is an act of erasure. Every one-time payment of Rs 40,000 for a lifetime of servitude is a measure of how little the state values Dalit lives.
The data sources that document this crisis — the NCSK annual reports, the Safai Karmachari Andolan’s field surveys, the National Human Rights Commission’s recommendations, the Supreme Court’s orders in Safai Karamchari Andolan v. Union of India and Dr. Balram Singh v. Union of India, the Parliamentary Standing Committee reports, and the work of organisations like the Centre for Law and Policy Research — collectively present an irrefutable record of state failure.
Bezwada Wilson, in a characteristic statement, has said that the number of sewer deaths recorded by the NCSK — 1,313 — is “not accurate.” The real number, he insists, is far higher. Many cases are simply not recorded. Many workers are not counted. Many families are never found.
Manual scavenging in India will end when the Indian state decides that Dalit lives are worth more than the cost of a sewer-cleaning robot. That day has not yet arrived. But the women who burnt their baskets, the activists who filed petitions, the engineers who built robots, and the workers who refused to descend — they have shown that it is possible. The question is whether India will follow.