Drowning in liquid filth – in 21st century India

A dalit manual scavenging in a sewer.

We pretend that people are not condemned to the caste system, Mari Marcel Thekaekara writes.



In 1996, I listened in disbelief as Martin Macwan, a dalit leader, told a Delhi gathering, ‘I am ashamed that as a dalit, working with my people for over 10 years, I did not know that balmiki people still carry shit on their heads everyday of their lives.’ It was on the eve of 50 years of independence from British colonialism. The Indian economy, we were told at that time, was poised to take off. Indians were ready to take over the internet world. Silicon Valley was ours for the asking. Yet we couldn’t deal with our own excrement with a modicum of decency. Women scooped it up, of different textures, from large open gutters, with a tin sheet, a stick broom and their bare hands. These were semi-urban toilets.



Putting on my journalistic hat, I went to Gujarat in early 1997 and visited public toilet after public toilet. I gagged often. I thought it was the worst thing I’d ever seen. And I have not led a sheltered life. Then I interviewed the family of a 19-year-old balmiki boy who while unblocking a manhole, was overcome by the toxic fumes, fell inside and died. He died for the paltry sum of about seven dollars. The boy died of drowning. Drowned in excrement. Till then I’d never given any thought to the common tiny news item ‘Man falls into manhole. Dies.’ I learnt later what this innocuously misleading little item truly meant. Imagine the indignity, the sheer horror, of drowning in shit. Imagine the nightmares his parents must have had. But perhaps they are inured to life and death as a balmiki conservancy worker.



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