“Kya hi badla?...we dealt with latrines earlier, and we do the same even now,” said Kallu, a 51-year-old resident of Lucknow who has been working as a manual scavenger for nearly three decades.
Kallu had quit cleaning up dry latrines in 2021 in the hope of finding an alternate job under the SRMS, the centre’s self-employment scheme for rehabilitation of scavengers. But after his application was rejected by the local civic agency responsible for verification, he resumed cleaning toilets at a school and houses in the city’s Thakurganj area to make ends meet.
