Shankara Colony, a slum in Mumbai’s Ghatkopar, serves as a temporary home to thousands of seasonal sanitation workers who travel from remote areas of Maharashtra to take part in the yearly ritual of desilting the stormwater drains before the dreaded monsoon arrives.
Squatting on the footpath adjacent to the slum, Laxman Kale, 55, says they do whatever is asked of them. “We do all that we are told to do. That could be cleaning drains, getting into nullahs, climbing down manholes — whatever the job requires.”
The cleaning of the 2,200-km-long drain network, which consists of both major and minor nullahs, was recommended by the Madhav Chitale committee after the calamitous 2005 Mumbai floods and falls under the ambit of the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC). It involves the removal of mud deposits carried by nullahs, and waterbodies like the Mithi river, which flows through Mumbai’s suburbs.
This year, the BMC has allocated ₹243 crore and appointed 31 agencies to oversee the desilting process. But the real work, typically done from March to May by 4,000-odd sanitation workers who are hired by the agencies through contractors, can be potentially fatal.
“The migrants are asked to get into drains where sewer water is present. They clean it with their bare hands, but all of this goes unnoticed, because manual scavenging in stormwater drains is not recognised,” says Shubham Kothari, member of Mumbai-based NGO Loktantrik Kamgar Union.
He explains that the city has failed to separate its sewers from stormwater drains, which, as per Section 239 of the Mumbai Municipal Corporation Act, 1888, should not be connected in the first place. This causes the waste from public toilets and septic tanks to be discharged into the main drain, leaving the workers to deal with toilet sludge.
Thin line
“The government calls the migrants ‘seasonal sanitation workers’ to get around the ban on manual scavenging, and when deaths happen, the government never acknowledges them,” Mr. Kothari says, adding that the workers’ issues remain largely unaddressed due to the transitory nature of the job.
Cleaning sewers and drains comes under the purview of the Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation Act, 2013 (PEMSR). According to the Act, employing any person for the “hazardous cleaning of sewers and septic tanks” is a punishable offence, entitling the worker to various forms of rehabilitation, including cash assistance.
Workers’ unions have been demanding that the BMC declare all stormwater drains and rivers as sewer lines so as to be able to add the sanitation workers to the list of manual scavengers and entitle them to rehabilitation.
But the BMC has denied that these workers could be classified as manual scavengers. “BMC issues tenders for desilting work. We have instructed contractors not to let workers enter drains and tanks, and follow all safety rules, such as wearing gloves and boots, but if they don’t listen to us, what can we do?” says BMC Additional Commissioner Sudhakar Shinde.
When asked about conducting a survey of the sanitation workers , the officer says that it is the State government’s job, not the civic body’s. “The BMC’s job is to get Mumbai clean before the monsoon, and that is exactly what we are doing,” he says.
Unforgiving work
Mr. Kale says that his source of income keeps changing through the year. From September to February, he and his wife work as sugarcane cutters in the village of Kherawadi in Parbhani district, earning about ₹60,000 for six months of work.
They then migrate to Mumbai until May, cleaning drains for about ₹30,000 each, and return to their hometown for the remaining three months of the year with barely any savings, which they will use for subsistence farming, covering healthcare expenses, and maintaining their home.
The couple has been coming to Mumbai for the last 20 years, sometimes bringing along their son, daughter-in-law, and two grandchildren. Together they earn about ₹800 a day cleaning the drains. Mr. Kale, who gets inside the drains, earns ₹450, while his wife receives ₹350 to collect and transfer waste.
This pattern of work is perpetuated by middlemen or Mukadams, migrants who are old settlers in the city. The Mukadams, having built a rapport with the contractors, supply them sanitation workers using their contacts in the villages for a nominal commission.
Sakubai, 58, is one such Mukadam. Having worked as a sanitation worker herself for several years, she later permanently settled in Shankara Colony, began building connections, and eventually became a supplier of labour. It is she who gets Mr. Kale and his wife work in Mumbai during the desilting months.
Ms. Sakubai and at least 25 other known Mukadams have networks across Marathwada and Vidarbha. Over time, a migration corridor has sprung up between Parbhani and Mumbai, facilitating the travel of these migrant sanitation workers, who arrive at slum pockets in Kalva, Ghatkopar, Chembur, Kandivali, and Malad for about three months. This year, Shankara Colony witnessed the influx of at least 600 families.
Never-ending cycle
Both Mr. Kale and Ms. Sakubai hail from the lowest rung of the caste hierarchy, restricting their job opportunities. Their circumstances have forced generations of families into a never-ending cycle of doing the same work.
Fifteen-year-old Kavita Kale, for instance, follows in her mother Sakubai’s footsteps, unclogging the arteries of the city. She was born in the slum of Ghatkopar and aspires to become a nurse. Chinnapoorna Kale, 13, too assists his father Rustom Kale, getting paid ₹300 every day to clean drains.
Children like Kavita and Chinnapoorna, and many others in the slum pockets, work as daily wagers when they are not attending school. According to a 2022 report by the Rehabilitation Research Initiative and South Asian Labour Network, Maharashtra is home to 12,562 child labourers, the highest number in India. Of these, most boys aged 8-13 are employed as manhole cleaning assistants.
Sanitation activist Pragya Akhilesh says the generational curse will never be broken if no proper tracking is done. “When there is no record of a person’s existence, anyone can make them do anything. Trafficked children are also used for this work, but without records, nothing can be proved,” she says.
