Jurists and activists gathered at the Press Club of India in New Delhi on 1 September 2026 to mark 80 years of Indian independence and push for an end to manual scavenging. The event, organized by the Safai Karmachari Andolan (SKA), brought together nearly 200 people including former judges, legal practitioners, and women from four states who continue to perform the work. Their testimonies exposed the gap between constitutional promises and the lived reality of those trapped in the practice.
Broken Promises and Persistent Reality
Successive prime ministers have pledged to eradicate manual scavenging since India gained independence. The Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation Act, 2013, aimed to ban the practice and provide rehabilitation, yet it persists. A 2018 national survey across 194 districts identified 58,098 people engaged in manual scavenging. Despite the construction of 122 million toilets and the declaration of an Open Defecation Free India on 2 October 2019, the reality on the ground remains grim. The Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment told the Lok Sabha in December 2021 that there was “no report of people currently engaged in manual scavenging” as defined under the MS Act, a claim directly contradicted by the women present at the gathering.
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Activists argue that the burden of ending the practice has been placed on the communities themselves. Usha Ranganathan, a board member of the SKA, highlighted how caste-based occupation confines entire communities to this labor. The testimonies shared by women like Ramdevi, Maya Bai Balmiki, and Rambati Balmiki offer a searing examination of the intersection of caste, untouchability, and patriarchy.
Sixty-four-year-old Ramdevi has been cleaning dry latrines for approximately 50 years in Uttar Pradesh. Instead of a regular wage, she receives 20 kilograms of rice and 20 kilograms of wheat once a year. She cleans for five households every month, and two of her sisters-in-law do the same. If she falls ill, her daughter-in-law is expected to clean the latrines in her place. If no one is available, the waste accumulates, becoming dirtier and more intensely smelly after three or four days. Ramdevi has no choice but to return to the work because, as she puts it, no one else will do it.
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Fifty-two-year-old Maya Bai Balmiki has spent 37 years cleaning dry latrines. After her husband died, leaving their children young, she had few options. Because of her caste, the only work available to her was manual scavenging. Fifty-year-old Rambati Balmiki has been cleaning human excreta for approximately 35 years. Her husband cleaned septic tanks, and she eventually began working for households that paid her between two and five rupees a month, sometimes offering cooked food or old clothes in exchange.
Demands for Evidence
Bezwada Wilson, a leader of the SKA movement born into a family of manual scavengers, pointed to a disturbing contradiction in the legal and social response to the issue. Governments and courts continue to demand evidence that manual scavenging exists. He questioned how a person could be expected to hold human excreta on their head or around their waist merely to provide photographic evidence of an injustice that society refuses to see. The gathering made clear that people engage in the work not by choice, but because caste discrimination denies them meaningful alternatives. These women have lived this life for generations, yet it is their children who continue to bear the brunt of this inherited confinement.