It is estimated that around 1.3 million Dalits in India, mostly women, make their living through manual scavenging - a term used to describe the job of removing human excrement from dry toilets and sewers using basic tools such as thin boards, buckets and baskets, lined with sacking, carried on the head. Manual scavengers earn as little as 7p per day.
Though this vile and inhumane practice was abolished by law in India in 1993 the practice is deeply entrenched in South Asian societies. Numerous pieces of legislation exist to protect and promote the rights of Dalits and workers. However these Acts are largely ignored, even by local authorities who employ thousands of Dalits as manual scavengers.
Manual scavenging is one of the most extreme forms of caste discrimination and its complicity in the continuaton of this practice is an international human rights scandal.
from the Dalit Solidarity Network website
Wednesday, April 01, 2009
shocking...
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2 comments:
Hi Twerpus,
Sorry, this has nothing much to do with your post, but just wanted to say hi, as I haven't dropped you a line for a while. Thinking of you, and miss you heaps!
Belinda
Twerpus! About time too! :p Miss you back.
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