“They offered him five hundred rupees and made him enter the sewer,” recalls Suraj Kala. Her 22-year-old son, Armaan, entered the sewer and never returned. “He was given no safety gear,” she says. A resident of Ludhiana, in Punjab, Suraj Kala along with other families, who have lost their loved ones while cleaning the sewer, sat on a protest at Jantar Mantar on Tuesday.
Bezwada Wilson’s Safai Karamchari Andolan (SKA) brought these families, sewer workers, activists and politicians together to demand an immediate ban on manual scavenging. Wilson in his address was critical of the Narendra Modi government. He says that while the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) central government has invested hundreds of crores on advertisements for its pet project, Swachh Bharat, it has kept aside barely crores for those who die cleaning sewers in urban areas.
The SKA had organised similar protests in 19 states of the country. Wilson says deaths in sewer tanks, or “murders”, are directly related to the malice of caste in India. Wilson tells Newslaundry, “The government is completely in silence about the deaths of manual scavengers. We are documenting the deaths and have been intimating the governments, but no administration is taking any action.” He further added, “To make the PM accountable and to seek answers, we and women who have lost their family members have gathered here.”
