NEW DELHI: India might have put 104 satellites into Orbit but it is finding it difficult to obliterate Manual Scavenging. As per the official data, despite putting Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation Act in place in 2013, the government has been able to rehabilitate only 568 people in the last three years.
According to the government statistics, there are 1,68,066 manual scavengers across the country as collated by the Socio Economic and Caste census 2011 as revised up to February 2017.
The actual numbers can be much more as the government does not have data regarding the manual scavengers in urban areas. Manual scavengers are people who “manually carry human excreta” from the dry latrines across India.
The figures accessed by The Sunday Standard revealed that in the year 2014-15, an abysmal 45 people received benefits under the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment’s scheme to rehabilitate the Manual Scavengers. The figure was slightly better in 2015-16 as 110 people were rehabilitated and in 2016-17 (up to December) 413 people received the benefits.
Manual scavenging has a caste angle to it too as according to a UN report 1.3 million Dalits in India are engaged in manual scavenging with the state of Uttar Pradesh earning the dubious distinction of having the maximum number of officially acknowledged manual scavengers (10,016), out of which 2,404 are in urban areas and 7,612 in rural regions.