A man is squatting over a clogged public toilet scooping out human faeces with a small mug and pouring it into a bucket. The stomach-churning video dated October 2022 was shot at the public toilet of Ambedkar colony for Adi Dravidars, under the Marandahalli town panchayat in Dharmapuri. The clip recorded by one of the sanitation workers to show proof of work as ‘before and after cleaning’, however, got leaked this January. The men in the video were the ‘old timers’— accustomed to this ‘job’, under the town panchayat administration.
But for Mariappan, in his 30s, the first time he scooped up human faeces, he vomited. “He still vomits,” said another woman, poking his arm and giggling. That was a little over two years ago, during the COVID-19 pandemic.
After his mother Palaniammal’s passing, Mariappan got his job on ‘compassionate grounds’, under the Tamil Nadu government’s ‘heir employment’ practice. Palaniammal was a sanitation worker of the town panchayat, cleaning latrines for the Marandahalli town panchayat for over 23 years.
Until 2018, even after the passage of Manual Scavenging laws in 2013, every Saturday, the town panchayat administration would gather its sanitation workers at the village grounds to clean the human faeces collected over the week from open defecation, in order to prepare the grounds for Sunday’s village market.
“Palaniammal would throw ash on the faeces for us to clean. We would spend the whole day sweeping it up, even when it rained” says Selvi (name changed to protect identity), remembering Mariappan’s mother. She is one among 24 women contractual workers appointed to self help groups (SHGs).
Job or duty?
“The workers believed it was their job to clean human faeces,” says R. Selvam, joint secretary, Ooraga Valarchi Ullatchi Thurai Thozhilalargal Sangam, a labour union that is an affiliate of Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU). “It wasn’t easy to organise them, to make them believe it was a grave violation. We fought, forcing the town panchayat build a public toilet there,” he says.
However, as the video shows, cleaning faeces has only shifted from the village ground to the town panchayat toilets, invisibilising manual scavenging within the public toilet’s confines. On January 29, a day before Untouchability Eradication Day, the sanitation workers gathered at the Government Boys Higher Secondary School overlooking the town panchayat office. They had just come out of a meeting with the town panchayat clerk Sabhari, who had asked them to sign a declaration that they would not engage in manual scavenging.
“We said we won’t sign it. There had been a similar circular sent out last year. We signed it then. After that, it was they who sent us to clean the colony toilet and now when the video came out, they are saying they will punish us for manual scavenging, as if we take pleasure in it,” said Govindaraj, one of the men in the video. Layers of precarity.
In the disquiet of that meeting, the multiple layers of the precarity of sanitation workers’ lives were bared.
To get this job Mariappan was asked to pay ₹5.5 lakh to ‘push his case’, says Govindaraj. The family borrowed money from everywhere. “We handed over the money to a clerk Sampath and sweeper Viji [a go-between at the town panchayat office functioning as a clerical ‘assistant’],” alleges Govindaraj.
Two years later, the family is caught in a debt spiral trying to pay off the 5% interest. “His salary of ₹19,000 goes into paying off the interest. How do we take care of our three children,” asks his wife. The family is still unaware of how much was owed to Palaniammal by way of a final settlement. “When we ask the present clerk Sabhari to move the file for details, he asked for ₹40,000,” says an angry Govindaraj.
Treated as only seasonal contract workers despite the permanent nature of sanitation work, they get paid ₹353 per day, with wage cuts for holidays and festivals. They have no ESI, PF, no double wages or compensatory off on government holidays, no full day weekly off. “I joined in 2006 at ₹25 per day, when my daughter was two years old. Today I have married her off, and my salary has not even touched ₹10,000,” says Sasi (name changed). “We clean what you won’t clean; at least hike our pay,” she says.
To make up for the shortfall, all have SHG loans and usurious borrowings. “I borrowed ₹3,000 and have to pay ₹300 as interest every Saturday. I can’t miss it and can’t lose this job,” says Vimala, also a contractual worker.
Flaws in the toilet infra
Local body jurisdictions have significant numbers of toilet-less households and are also steeped in caste prejudices. Public toilets built decades ago have Indian basins embedded at the floor level, leaving little elevation from the septic tanks. The archaic plumbing systems and inconsistent water supply add to the clogging. Public toilets, intended to curb open defecation, have both invisibilised and institutionalised manual scavenging.
An Indian toilet basin should have a one-foot elevation for clear flush and flow to prevent clogging, says a municipal engineer. The thin line between cleaning a toilet and manual scavenging is breached by institutional failure, says R. Krishnan, a Sangam member. “It is not enough to build a toilet; it needs water, proper plumbing.” Without addressing the structural flaws, the toilets are painted and tiles repaired. For instance, the toilet that figured in the video, was contracted out for renovation at ₹4 lakh. “The basins were fine. We only had to repair the broken tiles on the walls, and paint the toilet,” the contractor said. The Hindu visited the toilet given a facelift with fresh paint and replaced tiles in parts. However it had a cracked toilet basin left untouched. Town panchayat executive officer Sitheraikani said, “The toilet was contracted for renovation. They didn’t have to clean it. Even if they did, why did they have to put their hand inside to clean it. Couldn’t they have just poured water for it to flush down.” Later, he claimed the workers might have brought the faeces in a bucket from somewhere just to spite him. The lived experiences of manual scavengers cannot be whitewashed by a mere name change, says Selvam. “You sanitised their name from scavenger to Thuppuravu Paniyalargal (sanitation worker). But has there been any improvement in their condition,” he asked.
The odds are stacked against the workers. A polluting occupation in a caste-graded social order, white collar solidarity of a vindictive officialdom that acts with impunity, the precarity of contractual employment, the below-subsistence level wages and corruption that spells debt for the worker, and the threat of memos, charges, and suspension of the permanent employees has made collective bargaining difficult for the worker.
