In 2018, Indian billionaires got richer by Rs 2,200 crore a day, with the top 1 per cent of the country’s richest getting richer by 39 per cent as against just 3 per cent increase in wealth for the bottom-half of the population.
India also has the highest number of BPL families and a poverty rate of 21.1 per cent—in 1947, it was 70 per cent. One in three Indian children are stunted. Over one lakh rural households are dependent on manual scavenging for income.
In the Cesspool of Ignominy
Shame is Gireeshan Nair’s livelihood. This manual scavenger spends 10 hours on an average every day, cleaning manholes and septic tanks, entering pits full of human excreta, medical waste and sanitary pads.
The nature of his work shamed his daughter. Many times, poisonous gases in sewer systems would make Gireeshan faint. But his friends rescued him. “I started off in 1999. I panicked when I got into a manhole for the first time because I couldn’t stand the toxic gas.”
ALSO READ: India's eco-warriors: The men sowing hope
After working in small manholes, he is now an expert in cleaning the big ones. Since 1993, 620 manual scavengers have died in the country. In the past three years alone, the number was 88.
Though manual scavenging is prohibited in India, by the Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation Act, 2013, it has not been replaced by machines.
“No robot can replace humans in this work. Drainage systems will have to be developed to international standards which is not going to happen anytime soon,” says Gireeshan. “Even after 72 years of Independence, we live like the slaves of Egypt.”
His daily wage is Rs 775. However, the contractors do not pay him on most days. He gets no money for sanitary lotions, gears, gloves or caps either to ensure his safety, though manual scavengers get tetanus vaccine at least once in three months.
Debt of Ignorance
There are bonds that unite and bonds that destroy. Vani (name changed) is a bonded labourer who was rescued from her wood-cutting job in the Konerikuppam forests of Tamil Nadu. Her husband had borrowed Rs 10,000 from a wood trader 10 years ago in exchange for labour.
She married into his debt and worked 11 hours a day chopping wood. By involving their children, the family earned between Rs 300-400 a week. Since she never went to school, Vani is like many other bonded labourers who cannot calculate the amount of the loan balance.
ALSO READ: Nationalism storming new citadels in the Modi era
“We don’t know how addition. We would ask the lender to keep track. He refused to agree we had repaid the loan,” she says. The vicious cycle continued as more amounts were borrowed to treat a sickness, or money had to be given for a religious function or a family event.
Vani’s children were born in the forest. Her family lived in a make-shift plastic and leaf-woven tent in the jungle. The future of rescued labourers is scary: they face death threats from former bosses and stigma from their colleagues, who label them informers.
Officials haven’t issued bonded labour-release certificates. Without work and money, ‘freedom’ has only brought fear and uncertainty.
ALSO READ: Crying shame: An India where a crime is committed against a Dalit every 15 minutes
Drinking Problem
Drought has kept the Indian poor thirsty for generations. Over 7,000 villages in Marathwada are affected this year. The sight of lakhs of women and children walking large distances to fill a single bucket is common in Aurangabad.
The tale of three children, 10-year-old Siddharth Dhage, 12-year-old Ayesha Garud and nine-year-old Sakshi, sums up the heartbreak of drought travel. Every day after school, they take a 14-km train ride to Aurangabad with buckets and cans for tap water.
Water connectivity is a scourge of rural India, with many remote village slacking access to drinking water. In the slums, a drink is expensive: Rs 60 for a 200-litre water drum and Rs 1,150 for municipal water tankers every month.
The borewells are drying up, and people take the water train. The mega project to bring tap water to all households in Aurangabad has dried up for the past 11 years.
Official water supply is only once every five or six days. Meanwhile, the government and private corporations are squabbling over money for a project to connect Jayakwadi dam to Nakshatrawadi reservoir to build the city’s new water supply network.
Fighting Child Cancer with Nutrition
Purnota Bahl, founder and CEO of Cuddles Foundation, was traumatised when she visited Tata Memorial Hospital to monitor the utilisation of the funds she had donated to treat underprivileged children.
For years, she had been giving a portion of her monthly salary to the hospital for the treatment of cancer-afflicted children from poor families. One day, the sight of a baby’s foot in an overcrowded maternity ward reminded her of her daughter.
It was the moment that changed her destiny. She was shocked to learn that the hospital had not enough money for food or nutrition. Every year in India, around 50,000 children are affected by cancer. Only 22 percent get treatment; the rest are too poor to afford hospitals.
Studies have shown that most of them are also malnourished—the bane of Indian poverty. In 2011, Mumbai-based Purnota established Cuddles Foundation, India’s sole NGO with a dedicated, professional nutrition service to help poor cancer patients.
It has been providing food and nutrition to underprivileged cancer-affected children and roped in nutritionists and hospitals such as Tata Memorial Centre and AIIMS across India.
Over 35,000 children have benefitted so far. Today, the exclusively women-run establishment has 13 branches in India and partners with 22 hospitals.