By Annu Anand, IANS
Devas (Madhya Pradesh) : The rehabilitation of scavengers in Madhya Pradesh is posing severe problems even as their degrading work of head-loading human excreta continues.
In February 2002, the ‘Garima Abhiyan’ (dignity campaign) was launched in Devas district following which Kiran Bai along with 26 other women of the Balmiki settlement in Bharosan village had stopped working as scavengers. ‘Self-esteem’ was used as a motivating factor to help people shed the work.
But Kiran could not find an alternative means of livelihood. She and others like her started working as agricultural labourers. The work was irregular and often underpaid, as they had no knowledge of this work, Grassroots Features reports.
Kiran’s schoolgoing children also stopped getting scholarships, like the children of other women who had left scavenging. Now most of the children from Balmiki basti are out of schools.
That’s because the central government, while banning the practice of scavenging in 1993, under The Employment of Manual scavengers and Construction of Dry latrines (prohibition) Act, 1993, had also announced a “National Scheme of Liberation and Rehabilitation of Scavengers and their Dependents.”
As part of the scheme, a pre-matriculation scholarship of Rs.40 per month for Classes 1-5 and Rs.60 for Classes 6-8 was given to two children of each family involved in scavenging. This incentive had motivated many scavengers to send their children to school.
But in 2000, when efforts to end scavenging under the Act gained momentum, the worst affected were schoolgoing children. They stopped getting scholarships because of the inherent contradiction of the legislation and the scholarship scheme. The law bans scavenging, while the scholarship scheme is meant for children of people engaged in unclean occupation.
Shobha, who was a scavenger, has stopped sending her two daughters to school after she decided to look for an alternative occupation. She doesn’t earn from scavenging any more and in the absence of an alternative livelihood she could not afford to buy school uniforms, or give fees for her children.
According to the official rulebook, a person applying for scholarship has to file an affidavit that he/she had worked as scavenger for 100 days during a year, for approval.
But no official is ready to give this approval nowadays, as no one wants to accept that scavenging continues in his jurisdiction.
Those who had stopped working as scavengers are forced to do various menial jobs, such as disposing of dead animals, taking clothes off the dead bodies in the cremation ground and performing last rites of unclaimed dead bodies.
The government has focused mainly on economic rehabilitation. But the occupations, for which loans are being provided, suited men, while 93 percent of scavengers were women.
Asif, who heads Jansahas, an NGO that works on this issue in Devas district, said loans are given for occupations such as auto-rickshaws, and shops. It is not that the women cannot take up these occupations, but they require training for that.
People like Kiran and Shobha of the Balmiki settlement in Bharosan village, had left scavenging more that five years ago, but even today they have to wait endlessly for the harvest season for work or for some menial labour from a government department.
The United Progressive Alliance government had directed the ministry of social justice and empowerment to ensure that manual scavenging is stopped after December 2007 in all the states. And to achieve this, the Planning Commission formulated a national scheme.
The Madhya Pradesh government in an affidavit in the High Court had claimed that scavenging doesn’t exist any more in the state. But a survey conducted under the Abhiyan campaign in nine districts last year revealed that 618 persons still continue to follow this practice. There were 52 others who in the absence of proper rehabilitation turned to their old profession.
The government may celebrate a growth rate of nine percent, but the fact remains that even today, about 600,000 people continue to work as scavengers.
Now the challenge is whether the government can stop this degrading practice by the deadline of December 2007, while ensuring that children of scavengers studying in the school do not suffer. Or may be there would be a new deadline!