Maila Mukti Yatra comes to an end

A two month long national campaign against manual scavenging, Maila Mukti Yatra has come to an end 31 January, 2013. The campaign went around the whole nation, appealing to women and men engaged in manual scavenging to leave the inhuman practice. We, the Forum Against Manual Scavenging (FAMS), have followed their campaign closely and believe that the persistence of manual scavenging and the State’s attempts to eradicate it must be looked at closely.

The act of manual scavenging has been practised for long, unfettered by the complacent strands of a society wedded to an abominable tradition. Manual scavenging as an occupation is entrenched in caste discrimination. We find that this is practiced as a form of untouchability in many places.

The practice is not only confined to cleaning human excreta. The people who clean the filth from urban sewer lines and the sweepers of railways are scavengers.

It is striking to find that economic backwardness has got little to do with the issue as some of the most deprived districts of India, for instance Dantewada and Bastar, according to Census 2011 (provisional data) show no dry latrines being serviced manually.

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