How to abolish a dirty, low-status job

(Sum's take of manual scavenging of human faeces - a dirty, low-cost job, which is a curse on our society and nullifies all our claims of equality)

On my recent visit to my massis's place in Phillaur (a small township near Ludhiana, known for a Punjab Police training centre) I happened to come across a familiar face - "Prema". As a kid I used to spend my winter vacations at Phillaur and in the process got familiar with the place. It is a small rickety town near Ludhiana in Punjab. Here goes my blog starring in lead "Prema".

PEOPLE cross the street to avoid Prema, a wrinkled-faced old woman dressed in a cherry-red salwar kameez. It is the wide iron pan and wire brush she carries that mark her out as someone to be avoided: these are the ancient tools of the “manual scavenger”, a euphemism for those who clean up the faeces from houses that lack flushing toilets.

Manual scavenging was banned in 1993 by a law that also forbade the unplumbed toilets that necessitate it. But implementation has been slow. So several hundred thousand scavengers are still at work. A recent report by Delhi University found more than 1,000 in the capital doing a job that in effect renders them dalits—untouchables, as they used to be known. After Prema has finished her morning’s work—for which she earns 75 rupees ($1.73) of extra spending money a month—she scrubs herself clean with soap. But she is still treated as a pariah: “Shopkeepers drop the rice to me; they won’t touch me,” she says.

I get shivers down my spine thinking of a life as low in status as "Prema's". It also raises a question in my mind are we right in getting such low status jobs done from other people simply because we are able to take advantage of their unpriviledged status and their need for money. Some may argue that such munual toilets are cost effective, but my economist brain says if you invest a little in a low cost portable severage kit for getting flushing toilets (easily avaibale at sanitary stores) you are doing yoursef, your family a lot good in terms of health and you are contibuting your bit in abolishing such petty and dirty low status jobs. Also if you add up her salary of Rs.75 per month, you'' recover the cost of getting a flush toilet in a few years. Next time a "Prema" comes to your house for cleaning your manual toilets, think about being in her shoes for a while; I promise you, you'l not eat anything the the whole day.