Mechanical cleaning

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman’s Budget announcement of enabling all cities and towns to switch to 100 per cent mechanical de-sludging of sewers and septic tanks is laudable. The proposed transition is a significant step aimed at ending the dehumanising and unsafe practice of manual scavenging. In December last year, the Lok Sabha was informed that as many as 400 people had died while undertaking the hazardous cleaning of sewers and septic tanks since 2017. That is only the official figure. Despite laws banning it, manual scavenging continues unabated. The Supreme Court, which mandated a compensation of

Rs 10 lakh by the state government to the family of any person who dies, voiced outrage that no place in the world sends people to ‘gas chambers to die’. Still, daily-wagers performing the precarious task without technological tools or basic protective gear is the norm and not an exception.

The Centre has been proactive in the past on coming up with mechanisation plans, but the implementation has been tardy. Besides ensuring adequate funding and incentivising the switchover, the renewed push needs to focus on why the earlier projects did not prove to be successful. That would require earnest efforts by state governments to identify the number of people involved in manual scavenging, procurement of equipment on a mass scale, providing training, making its use mandatory and enforcing the laws more stringently. A workable model would involve offering loans on easy terms for buying of machines by contractors or workers themselves, guaranteeing them a minimum number of work days and public awareness.

Given the sheer logistics, urban sanitation needs scientific solutions on an urgent basis. One such way out is to encourage micro-entrepreneurs. Various startups are working on affordable cleaning robots or suction machines. The resistance to technological interventions by civic bodies is a short-sighted approach that symbolises dereliction of duty as well as a lack of concern and empathy.

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