Manual Scavenging: an ongoing problem in India

Manual scavenging refers to the practice of manually cleaning, carrying, disposing or handling in any

manner, human excreta from dry latrines and sewers. It is a caste-based occupation and the vast majority of workers involved are women. This practice was banned with the passing of the Employment of Manual Scavengers and Construction of Dry Latrines (Prohibition) Act 1993 and with the Prohibition of Employment As Manual Scavengers & their Rehabilitation Act 2013, but it continues to find practitioners. The occupation persists mainly because of the continued presence of insanitary latrines.There are about 2.6 million insanitary latrines (dry toilets) that require cleaning by hand.This dehumanizing practice is prevalent across many indian states, and it is done by people who fall lowest in the caste hierarchy. Not only is this practice humiliating but also a major cause of

discrimination.

Manual scavenging exists in many forms:

- Dry latrines, the oldest and most common form. Workers gather the waste manually, then carry it out of the house in baskets and dispose it outside the village. 98% of these workers are women.

Community Dry latrines (big structure used collectively by people) and Individual Dry Latrines (present at individual houses) are estimated to be 2,600,000 all over the country. According to the House Listing and Housing Census 2011, states such as Andhra Pradesh, Assam, Jammu and Kashmir, Maharashtra,Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal account for more than 72% of the insanitary latrines in India.

- Railway track scavenging, the biggest violator of the law in India is the Indian Railways (the ministry continues to deny the practice of manual scavenging) where many train carriages have toilets dropping the excreta from trains on the tracks and who employ scavengers to clean the tracks manually. There are about 8,025 railway stations in the country which ferry about 23,000,000 passengers everyday and an estimated number of 36,176 railway cleaners.

- Cleaning of sewers and septic tanks, prevalent in urban areas. Workers gather the sewage with bare

hands, sometimes while neck deep in sewage. Many people die every year by inhaling poisonous gases.With an estimated number of 770,000 sewer cleaners the average of reported deaths is around 600 every year.Manual scavengers are at a double disadvantage. They are members of lower castes and as such, face enormous discrimination in society, and second, are disadvantaged because they are manual scavengers who clean human excreta. The challenge of rehabilitation is urgent, and requires a comprehensive approach that moves beyond expanding income generation or providing loans, to focus on various aspects crucial to secure the future of the next generation of liberated manual scavengers. Manual scavenging is not only a caste-based but also a gender-based occupation with 90% of them being women. 

Households with dry latrines prefer women to clean the excreta instead of men as they are located inside the house.According to a Human Rights Watch report, on an average, women get paid as little as between Rs 10 and Rs 50 every month per household. It is much less than men who earn up to Rs 300 a day for cleaning sewer lines.There have been various efforts by the government, civil society organizations, and the foreign donor community to end manual scavenging. However there are significant barriers to achieving lasting change.Overcoming them requires a serious commitment from the government to ensure adequate programs are in place and to hold officials at all levels accountable for implementing laws and policies aimed at ending manual scavenging.

Legislative attempts to end manual scavenging have been accompanied by administrative programs,

referred to as schemes, and policies directed at converting India’s sanitation system and at helping

communities engaged in manual scavenging seek alternate livelihoods. The responsibility for

implementing these schemes and policies rests with a number of different government departments,

which often do not coordinate their efforts. The Government of India has adopted a two-pronged

strategy of eliminating insanitary latrines through demolition and conversion into sanitary latrines, and developing a comprehensive rehabilitation package for manual scavengers through a survey. 

However,while manual scavenging for many may have ended as a form of employment, the stigma and discrimination associated with it lingers on, making it difficult for former or liberated manual scavengers to secure alternate livelihoods and raising the fear that people could once again return to manual scavenging in the absence of other opportunities to support their families.

In contrast to government failure, the success of civil society organizations in empowering individuals to leave manual scavenging confirms that, with directed effort, it is possible to end the practice. Without effective government programs, civil society and community based organizations are working to generate livelihoods for individuals who leave manual scavenging. For instance, they have piloted gender and market sensitive vocational training. According to Bezwada Wilson, founder of Safai Karmachari Andolan (a movement for elimination of manual scavenging), the Indian government has responded positively to these initiatives by engaging in serious dialogue with civil society organizations. These efforts offer strategies and good practices to translate India’s legislative commitments into effective action at the local level.Various United Nations agencies and international human rights bodies have also addressed manual scavenging: 

UNICEF has approached manual scavenging as a water and sanitation issue; the World

Health Organization (WHO) has taken up manual scavenging as a health issue; UNDP has a special task force on the issue of Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes; UN Women addresses manual scavenging based upon that fact that 95 percent of manual scavengers who clean dry toilets and open defecation are women; and the ILO focuses on ending manual scavenging by supporting implementation of relevant government policies in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, and Gujarat. On January 31, 2013, the UN High Commissioner on Human Rights, Navi Pillay, appealed to the Indian government to take action to end manual scavenging.

Government, civil society organizations, and the foreign donors intervention is needed to end caste based labor designations that bind women and men to manual scavenging. To overcome the entrenched obstacles discussed above, individuals need immediate access to alternate livelihoods and housing, and an effective response when they face threats of violence.

HEEALS (Health, Education, Environment And Livelihood Society) is one of those organizations

directly involved in facing manual scavenging problem. It is working on Water Sanitation and Toilet

Building projects in seven states: Delhi (National Capital Region), Haryana, Rajasthan, Himachal,

Uttranchal, Leh and Uttar Pradesh. HEEALS works in marginalized communities, slum schools, schools in unauthorised colonies, orphanages and refugee camps. Through spreading education on Water,Sanitation and Hygiene, organizing workshop against Manual Scavenging and building clean and safe toilets, HEEALS is working to increase the attendance rates of pupils in schools who leave their studies to work as manual scavengers, reduce the number of diseases and deaths and improve the health of people across Indian society.

- Manuel
WASH Intern


References:
Human Rights Watch interview with Bezwada Wilson, national convener of Safai Karmachari Andolan,Delhi, December 13, 2013.
United Nations Development Programme and UN Solution Exchange (Gender Community of Practice),
“Report of National Round Table Discussion on Social Inclusion of Manual Scavengers,” December 21,2012.
https://www.downtoearth.org.in/news/waste/manual-scavenging-a-stinking-legacy-of-suffocation-andstigma-
61586
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manual_scavenging
http://www.hrw.org
http://in.one.un.org/page/breaking-free-rehabilitating-manual-scavengers/
https://www.safaikarmachariandolan.org
http://southasia.oneworld.net/features/manual-scavengers-indian-railways-in-denial#.XHjD7a1aa1t
http://www.undp.org/content/dam/india/docs/pub-povertyreduction/Social-inclusion-of-Manual-
Scavengers.pdf

End open air defecation in India

End open air defecation in India According to UNICEF: “Open defecation refers to the practice whereby people go out in fields, bushes, forests, open bodies of water, or other open spaces rather than using the toilet to defecate”. Open defecation represents a serious threat to the health of people (especially children) in India, where the estimated percentage of population practicing open defecation is around 40% (WHO/ UNICEF 2017 data). Open defecation was found by the WHO in 2014 to be a leading cause of diarrheal death. It is also an important factor that causes various diseases such as diarrhea, intestinal worm infections, hepatitis, cholera, typhoid and others. It can lead to environment and water pollution when rain flushes feces that are dispersed in the environment into surface water or unprotected wells. There are strong gender impacts connected with this practice: the lack of safe, private toilets makes women and girls vulnerable to violence and is an impediment to girls' education. Women are at risk of sexual molestation and rape as they search for places for open defecation that are secluded and private, often during hours of darkness.

The international commitment to end open air defecation worldwide is underlined in the SDG 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development set by the United Nations. Goal 6 states: “Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all” and its target 6.2 asserts: “By 2030 achieve access to adequate and equitable sanitation and hygiene for all and end open defecation, paying special attention to the needs of women and girls and those in vulnerable situations”. The data highlight how far we have come since 2000. Open defecation rates have fallen and billions have gained access to basic water and sanitation services. Despite these successes, progress has been uneven in both areas, with wide disparities among and within countries. Although the data show a great improvement, around 892 million people worldwide continue to lack even the most rudimentary sanitation and still practice open air defecation.

In October 2014, the Prime Minister of India launched an ambitious national sanitation program that aims to eliminate open defecation by 2019. The Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM) has unprecedented political support and has mobilized nearly $25 billion from Government, the private sector and civil society. The program targets behaviour change and community approaches to sanitation are being adopted throughout the country. The SBM has developed a national database with detailed information on latrine coverage down to the household level and a multi-stage verification process. As of June 2017, according to the SBM, over 205,000 villages, 149 districts and five States had reported themselves to be open defecation free.

The Government estimated that since the start of the Mission, in October 2014, coverage of latrines in rural India has increased from 42% to 65%, and the number of rural Indians defecating in the open had come down from 550 to 330 million people by June 2017. The SBM program recognizes the need to go beyond reporting infrastructure coverage, and is conducting population-based surveys to determine household use of sanitation facilities, which is the internationally agreed-upon indicator used by JMP (WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme for Water Supply, Sanitation and Hygiene) to compare progress across countries. Within the governmental program a joint initiative organized by the Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation and UNICEF aims to increase the capacity of local and national actors working in WASH in schools. The world has made steady progress: the proportion of the global population practising open defecation decreased from 20% to 12% between 2000 and 2015. But much remains to be done, especially in rural areas, where open defecation has been declining at a rate of just 0.7 percentage points per year. This rate would need to more than double in order to eliminate open defecation in rural areas by 2030.

HEEALS (Health, Education, Environment And Livelihood Society) is one of those organizations directly involved in facing and solving open air defecation problem. It is working on Water Sanitation, Menstrual Hygiene and Toilet Building projects in seven states: Delhi (National Capital Region), Haryana, Rajasthan, Himachal, Uttranchal, Leh and Uttar Pradesh. HEEALS works in slum schools, schools in unauthorised colonies, orphanages and refugee camps. Through spreading education on Sanitation, Menstrual Hygiene and building clean safe, toilets HEEALS is working to increase the attendance rates of pupils in schools, reduce the number of diseases and deaths and improve the health of people across Indian society.


Manuel Mezzadra WASH intern





References: Diarrhoeal diseases, WHO, 10th march 2014 Fear and anger: Perceptions of risks related to sexual violence against women linked to water and sanitation in Delhi, India - Briefing Note. SHARE (Sanitation and Hygiene Applied Research for Equity) and WaterAid, UK, Lennon, S. (2011). Progress on Drinking Water, Sanitation and Hygiene, 2017 updates and SDG baselines. WHO/ UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme for Water Supply and Sanitation Violence, Gender & WASH: A Practitioner’s Toolkit – Making water, sanitation and hygiene safer through improved programming and services, House, Sarah, Suzanne Ferron, Marni Sommer and Sue Cavill (2014). Webography: http://heeals.org https://heeals.blogspot.com http://unicef.in/whatwedo/11/eliminate-open-defecation https://washdata.org/reports https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_defecation#Impacts -

AN ECONOMIC SOLUTION TO CHILD MARRIAGE?

AN ECONOMIC SOLUTION TO CHILD MARRIAGE?

According to UNICEF, every years about 700 millionof child girls get married in the whole world.

Specialists claim that the end of child marriage practice could add more than $4tn to the global economy, curb population growth and transform the lives of millions of young women worldwide.

Particularly, a recent study by the World Bank(WB) and the International Center for Research on Women (ICRW), the first to quantify the financial cost of that phenomenon, suggests that eradicating child marriage would save governments money while enabling girls to complete their education and get better jo“this research provides crucial evidence showing that child marriage does not just impact the lives of the 700 million girls married every year, but also has a major negative impact on the economic development of the countries in which these girls live”.

A closer look to Indian currently situation reveals that, in the Country, more than 26 million women became brides before 18. One of the several reason is that, here, marriage tend to be very expensive for the bride’s family and it is a common understanding that more the girl is young more the expense for the marriage fall down, especially because in communities where the bride’s family pays the groom a dowry, they often have to pay less money if the bride is young and uneducated.Moreover,pooer families not only can not afford a good level of instruction for their children but also they strongly believe that it is better for them working instead of studying. Likewise, often those families must sell their children into marriage either to settle debts or to make some money. It is a cruel but, at the same time, real fact that giving a daughter in marriage allows parents to reduce family expenses by ensuring they have one less person to feed, clothes and education.

Governments and other policymakers should be spurred on by these data to commit additional energy and resources to ending child marriage as soon as possible. Doing that, it is possible to alleviate endemic poverty and to ensure that girls,everywhere, have access to a brighter future. At the same time, it is also true that defeating child marriage it is a paramount step for cutting institutional expenses and for increasing the national economy.

As a matter of fact, child marriage practice deeply annoy the Indian public system, increasing the sanitary system’s spending, the level of poverty, that one of population and, simultaneously, reducing human capabilities. These benefits would be felt particularly strongly in poorer segments of populations, since young girls in poverty are more likely to marry early than girls from other socio-economic groups.

Under this perspective, India Government has launched a few “Girls’ Development Projects”. Among those, the most remarkable, from the economic point of view, is the SUKANYA SAMRIDDHI YOJANA ACCOUNT, which has been promoted from January  2015, under the ‘Beti Bachao Beti Padhao’ initiative.

For fully understanding how that Programme works, it is necessary considering his 10 main features, explained in the apposite guide, provided by India Government.

1.      A guardian can open only one account in the name of one girl child and a maximum two accounts in the name of two different girl children.

2.      A Sukanya Samriddhi account can be opened in the name of a girl child till she attains the age of 10 years.

3.      Sukanya Samriddhi accounts can be opened in post offices and in designated public banks.

4.      Deposits can be made up to 14 years from the date of opening of the account.

5.      After this period, the account will only earn interest according to applicable rates.

6.      The account can be closed after completion of 21 years.

7.      Deposits made into the Sukanya Samriddhi account, the interest earned, and the maturity amount are tax-free.

8.      The minimum deposit that needs to be made every year into Sukanya Samriddhi account is now Rs 250.

9.      The maximum amount that can be deposited into Sukanya Samriddhi account on a yearly basis is Rs 1.50 lakh.

10.  Partial withdrawal from a Sukanya Samriddhi account, up to 50% of the balance at the end of the preceding financial year, can be made after the account-holder attains the age of 18, according to the India Post website.

The principal purposes of the Sukanya Samriddhi accountare:

·         Ensuring financial security of a girl child when she comes adult.

·         Making sure the education of the girl child continues uninterrupted.

·         Making sure that the girl is not married off before she becomes an adult (18 years old).

All of them have been thought to cope with the problem of child marriage in India.

According to BussinessToday, till November 2017, more than 1.26 crore accounts were opened across the country securing an amount of Rs 19,183 crore.

Although this noble initiative, the rate of child marriagge in India is one of the higest so far. It seems that parents, who maybe open that account for their daughters, decide to use that money for celebrating a good marriage instead of affording a good level of education.

To sum up,nowadays child marriagge practice is too spread in India, so it is not possible solve it with a simple and singular economic proposal. Having said that, in my opinion only an integrate strategy, which include both economic and social aspect, could have concrete result in the long time.

Martina Scavino

WASH & Intern coordinator