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Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Wednesday, 1 February, announced in the Union Budget 2023-24 that 100 percent mechanisation will be introduced in the cleaning of septic tanks and sewers.
"All cities and towns will be enabled for 100 per cent mechanical desludging of septic tanks and sewers to transition from manhole to machine-hole mode. Enhanced focus will be provided for scientific management of dry and wet waste."– Nirmala Sitharaman
Bezwada Wilson, founder and national convener of Safai Karmachari Andolan, slammed the announcement saying it has no "human angle" whatsoever.
"Where is the budgetary allocation? The finance minister has outsourced the responsibility of mechanisation to the cities and municipalities while not preparing any plan of its own," he told The Quint.
Scores of workers die every year as a result of inhaling toxic fumes when they enter septic tanks or sewers to clean them.
Manual scavenging – the practice of removing human excreta by hand from sewers or septic tanks – has been banned by the Indian government, however the practice continues across India.
As many as 330 people died due to "hazardous cleaning of sewer and septic tanks" from 2017-22, the union government informed the Lok Sabha in August 2022.
Experts question whether the government will be able to deliver on its promise of complete mechanisation. Kanthi Swaroop, a PhD scholar researching about sanitation and urban theory in the Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, told The Quint that universal deployment of machines is not possible without overhauling the existing sanitation infrastructure.
"The current infrastructure is primitive, broken and choppy. While it is a welcoming decision to deploy machines to clean septic tanks and sewers, not much progress can be made without transforming the infrastructure too," he said.
He also pointed out that mechanisation does not mean you stop needing workers.
"A sanitation system cannot run without sanitation workers. No country in the world has managed that. Therefore, the government needs to revamp and modernise its recruitment policy and pay attention to the rights and welfare of workers," he stated.
Wilson, who won Magsaysay Award in 2016 for his work towards eradicating manual scavenging, said that you cannot talk about mechanisation without talking about people.
"Liberation, rehabilitation, mechanisation – this is the order. You can't directly talk about mechanisation, which you are anyway not going to do. There is not a single mention in the budget about the people who have died while doing this work. The government isn't listening to the people at all," he said.
Raees Mohammed, founder of Dalit Camera and who also has his own septic tank cleaning service said that the government, NGOs and public underestimate the number of manual scavengers.
"The root cause of manual scavenging is caste and stigma. Since everyone finds it more economical to employ workers who are paid exploitative wages, India lacks proper machinery. People have no civic sense and they throw napkins, tobacco packets, condoms into the toilet and there is no machinery to clean septic tanks containing all this stuff," he stated.
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