Manhole or Black-hole

                                                                                                      

    Have you ever wondered how a person can survive inside and clean sewerage for 2 hours which is 6-20 feet down the ground with no oxygen and no safety gears where one cannot stand for even a single minute? We can say that it's a part of his/her duty since they are born for this. Pan India about 2000 sewer workers died since 1993 which means one manual scavenging death every five days and in the last five years,376 have died while cleaning sewers and septic tanks. Rashtriya Garima Abhiyan study said that 94% of those who died were from groups Scheduled Castes, 4% were from Other Backwards Classes and the rest from Scheduled Tribes which is a perfect epitome of 'Jati Pratha aur Shram Vibhajan'.

    It's safer being a soldier fighting in Kashmir than a sewer worker! At least 110 have died in sewers in 2019 itself year as against 64 security personal killed in the line of duty. There are some questions that we should ask ourselves every time we read such news. Every soldier dying in the line of duty is a martyr, but sewer worker?  Did we see any betterment in life of sweepers after Swachh Bharat Yajna? Why sanitization workers are not provided with safety equipment no hand gloves, no gumboots, no masks, no safety belt?  As per a study, 80% of sanitization workers do not reach retirement age because of chronic diseases only because of a lack of safety equipment, information and training. It's like asking our soldiers to save the borders without armour, helmet, gun and most important intelligence inputs.

    A black hole is a cosmic body of extremely intense gravity from which even light can barely escape. More or less a manhole is an uncanny place on earth where a sewer worker once enters barely escapes. On average, this 'black hole' claims 100 lives every year. What basically happens inside the sewer is the organic matter in sewer upon decomposition forms gases such as Hydrogen Sulphide (H2S), Methane (CH4) & Carbone Monoxide (CO) as major gases. The Hydrogen Sulphide (H2S) is a gas with rotten egg smell causes irritation in eyes and even blindness upon high exposure and can kill a man in a single inhale due to Asphyxia. The second reason is the lack of oxygen at such depths. The pattern of death is three dies in a row.

    Today, the daily wage of a sewer worker is Rs.250 which was Rs.100, 12 years ago, such a whopping increase I guess. Skilled labour wage in Delhi is Rs.622, on the contrary. In addition to this, since they are contract labours, they are not eligible for medical insurance and compensation after any mishappening. Lack of proper training, negligence on both sides, lack of awareness about do's & dont's and proper equipment are a few of the major reasons for these deaths. Although as per orders of honourable Supreme court of India under the 'Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation Act-2013'-manual scavenging banned in India means prohibits manual cleaning of toilet wastes, sewers, and septic tanks without safety gear and mechanised equipment. Municipal agencies have to provide equipment such as pumps at dangerous sites like clogged sewers. But contractors do not want to spend on the safety equipment. But how many contractors are prosecuted till date? 

    This brings us to rethink that do we really need an ambitious project like 'Bullet Train' worth 1.08 lakh crore? Or can we buy a sewer cleaning machine and safety gears for these sewer workers? Can we imagine India without this portion of society? Every citizen of India has equal rights to live and if we can at least give them what they deserve then we can really boast about the Statue of Unity which is a symbol of India's growth, prosperity, equality and unity.