Blot on Swachh Bharat

Hours after PM Modi received the Global Goalkeeper Award in New York for the success of Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, two Dalit children were thrashed to death by upper-caste men for defecating near the village panchayat building at Bhavkedhi in MP’s Shivpuri district. The irony does not end here. The village was declared open defecation-free (ODF) in April last year, but the kids’ family still does not have a toilet at home. For the record, about 11 crore toilets have been built across the country under the mega cleanliness mission, which was launched with fanfare on October 2, 2014. The PM is set to declare the country open defecation-free, again on October 2, on the occasion of Mahatma Gandhi’s 150th birth anniversary.

The double murder has exposed gaping holes in the implementation of the Swachh Bharat initiative, while laying bare an age-old social evil that persists even in the 21st century — caste discrimination. Manoj, a labourer whose youngest sister and only son met a gruesome end, has alleged that his family was repeatedly subjected to casteist slurs by fellow villagers. He claims that the panchayat had sanctioned a house with a toilet for him, but an influential relative of the accused threw a spanner in the works. Manoj’s case can’t be dismissed as an aberration; there must be countless others suffering a similar ordeal.

Even as our leaders remember Gandhi while only paying lip service to the ideals he lived and died for, we must not forgot that the Father of the Nation was both a votary of cleanliness and a crusader against casteism and untouchability. Rapping the Centre recently over its failure to end the dehumanising practice of manual scavenging, the SC had observed that caste bias existed even over seven decades after Independence. Sanitation is only one aspect of cleanliness. The latter is indeed next to godliness if it also removes the filth of prejudice and hatred from our minds. Physical cleaning and mental cleansing should go hand in hand. India will witness a new dawn only when all inequalities and inequities are erased.