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Manual scavenging is a stigma on India. It was declared illegal 25 years back. Still, sewer deaths continue. It is not that resources for abolition of manual scavenging are lacking. It is continuing only due to government’s apathy, says Raj Valmiki.

On paper, building “insanitary” (dry) toilets and employing people to clean them became illegal in 1993. But on the ground, the members – mostly women – of Haila and Valmiki communities wouldn’t dare look anywhere else for sustenance other than the job into which they had been told they were born. Manual scavenging – which requires these women to carry human excrement – continued