Sanitation Workers

Manual Scavenging is a prevalent job in India. Even with the backwardness of the job, it has not been restricted to rural areas. Nearly all the urban areas are illegally taking manual work from the lowest section of society. It is contrary to India’s economic development, which has time and again told us the brimming inequality in the society and the eccentric development in India. I don’t think that it is just the government which has to be seen in the doing picture. In fact, it forms a very small fraction of the population and it is dealing with the administrative challenges which are day by day becoming a mammoth task. Maybe instead of criticizing the politician for everything or the executive head, we need to ask us a simple question, what are our contribution? Isn’t it that democracy is to the people, for the people and yes, by the people? Does democracy by the people only take into consideration the part pleading and criticizing takes place? It has to be more than that and in the true sense, it is there in a very small amount. It is because of this deformity that we see the ‘babu’ culture or the bureaucratic culture, and the cream layer of politicians apart from the capitalist dominating the Indian land. As it is said that it was not the British who conquered India, it was Indians who gave India to them. If our kings and people were not divisive and did not conspire against each other, probably it was not possible for the Britishers to rule this mighty land for 200 years! But then, things have changed?

Why is tolerable to us all the things that should not be tolerated either at the individual level or the community or national level? There are probably some malfunctions in the education system which is not all inclusive and neither prepares the students truly for the nation building. Nation building will automatically take place with a superior human capital. Human capital is somehow the most important asset; for example, observe the rejuvenation time in Japan after any natural calamity. It is that Sir and Ma’am sycophancy attitude which prevails across the verticals and acting as a blockade. It is so intrinsic in all of us and we could not even see it. And the brunt of this behavior is taken mostly by the least developed among us. There are more than 1500 deaths of sewage workers between the years 2016-2018. It is a national calamity, just not occurring in a day and since it affects the most neglected, the issue is least talked about. The class culture is already predominant in India. If there is an unfortunate event in a metro city, it will overshadow the media contrary to the same in some rural area. There is unequal weightage accorded to the life of a person and it is perfectly okay with us. It is one of the normalized behaviors of ours. It has happened so much with us that we became hopeless about it.

I believe we all need to acknowledge our power as a citizen and proactively put us besides everyone else. There is a difference between granting equal respect and granting equal opportunity. Former should be based on the capabilities and later should be by default. The bell must ring now.