Mita Rawat, 30, says she is so ‘untouchable’ for her neighbor – an upper caste Brahmin – that even if she hammers a nail in the shared boundary wall, he removes it because it is ‘touching’ his house! “On good days, he just mocks me or prefers to just look away, but when he decides to be mean – which is on most days – he throws garbage in front of my house, hurls abuses at me and curses my family – anything and everything goes.
Do you think I am going to him and read him the Employment of Manual Scavengers and Construction of Dry Latrines (Prohibition) Act, 1993? It will so much water off a buffalo’s back as far as he’s concerned, a waste of time because his mind was already made up for him generations ago,” she says with a half-smile.
Mita lives in her small brick house on a lane that leads to the Government-run Public Work Department (PWD) Guest House in village Mohammadabad, Dakshin Mohalla, Rauza in district Ghazipur, where all high-ranking Government functionaries and Ministers stay when visiting the district. “They are aware about my existence and how I am treated, but prefer not to know,” she says.
It has been a difficult life for Mita, and it seems to have got even more difficult after she left the indignity and the filth of manual scavenging four years ago. “My 15-years old son has passed his class 8th, but does nothing since no one wants to employ him because of his caste. I cannot see his despondency but don’t know how to give him the strength to battle on. My 55-year old husband cooks food in a night garage and does not come home before the morning. For me to see him live like this every day is heart breaking, but we don’t have the luxury of sitting back in our old age and enjoy the fruits of our labour. If we don’t work, there will be no food,” she says.
Mita became a manual scavenger when she was 15-years old. “Mother used to harass me to come with her everytime she left home early in the morning. I just had time to quickly splash some water on my face before I was out – walking in the early dawn to help her as she manually cleaned the dry latrines for a pittance. Then, when we were back late evening, we would divide the food amongst ourselves and have our first meal of the day, a meal of last evening’s leftovers carried in a dirty plastic bag or just wrapped carefully in her saree. She told me “if you don’t work I will not give you food”. I’ve only known a childhood of filthy work and torn clothes, and I used to be always hungry and disheveled because I was too tired to do anything about my appearance! It continued this way for as long as I can remember. I was home-tutored till class 5th because in our large family – two sisters, three brothers and our parents – food was a priority, not school,” she says.
Mita’s father was a sweeper in Calcutta Medical College while her mother had little choice but to work as a manual scavenger. “I remember she once told me in one of her weak moments “How I would like to get out of this profession, but hunger brings me back to it every morning”.
When I took her place, the families who employed us used to give us one roti (chapatti) or a handful of grain, but no cash. It was all fixed: one roti per house, and we cleaned the toilets of 10-12 houses in a day, which gave us 10-12 roti’s to fill our collective stomachs, not one less and certainly not one more. Later, after 5-6-years, it increased to two rotis, but we had grown too, and so had our hunger.
Even today, I cannot bring myself to eat kadi (a dish made of curd) and dal (lentils) because it reminds me of human waste.
There was nothing special reserved for any festival – whatever was cooked in these houses and was leftover was given to us the next day. And if we did not go for a few days, they screamed at me and did not fail to remind me that I was living on their land and on their crumbs, how dare I refuse to work? Sometimes, they beat us. If I did decide to leave my work, then I had to handover my work to another woman; the number of houses we worked was fixed and so was the practice of handing over: if anyone left the profession, she had to hand-over the house to another before leaving, and so it went like this for generations. To me, it seemed as if it would never change,” she adds.
Ask her what was the worst part of her job, and surprisingly, it was not the actual removal of human excreta with her bare hands, using only a small broom or a stick, but how people used to scream whenever she or other women manual scavengers were seen walking on the road – “move away, the dirty ones are coming!” or “the bhangi’s (pejorative word for the lowest castes) are here; don’t go near or you will become impure!”. I walked the way I have always does – eyes lowered and looking straight ahead. This was the worst part of my work. But I had become so de-sensitised I had stopped crying long ago.
Whenever we were given food, it was always throwing on our plate; if by mistake our hands touched their plate, they threw away the plate and raged at us for our temerity.
The disposal of baskets of excreta used to happen either on land owned by the household or on land that several households shared mutually, called the saur sthan. When the basket leaked in the rains, I would take a bath several times a day but the smell would never go away. I used to think: people bow to God in the morning after a bath, and here I was, seeing excreta even before dawn has touched the morning sky,” says Mita, wiping her sweat-slicked face with her dupatta. Her red and yellow bangles bounce on her wrists. She smiles when asked whether she likes bangles.
Says Kapil Dev Kesri, Secretary of the PACS partner NGO “Even if all the dry toilets are removed from across the state, nothing much would have changed, since the most difficult part will still remain – rehabilitation of manual scavengers.” And that, he says, doesn’t mean giving someone a handcart. “It is about providing an alternative livelihood to thousands and thousands of women like Mita. Nobody has even begun to think about this seriously,” he says, adding “it is still very common in rural Uttar Pradesh. The Government taking false affidavits from women that they have left manual scavenging so that they can gloss over the grim reality. Even the Rs 40000 given as one-time support by the Government to these women carries no documentation,” he adds.
People like Saraswati aren’t invisible. According to the 2011 census, there are 750,000 families that still work as manual scavengers. Most live in Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat and Jammu and Kashmir. Many states openly deny the existence of such people.
Mita says that when she was approached by PACS in 2012, it was as if finally the Gods had considered her worthy of being given a second chance in life. “With PACS, I finally had hope. Never otherwise would I have known there were so many Government programme meant for our welfare. In fact, I only just learnt that what we did was actually illegal under the Constitution,” she says as she tries to get a tired old fan working again.
Usha Yadav, Theme Coordinator, says it took weeks of counseling Mita before she was even ready to listen to her, so ingrained was the humiliation in her psyche. “She was not able to comprehend someone will actually walk up to her and say “Your days as a manual scavenger are over. Here, take this…this is your new life!” But succeed we did,” he says.
When she stopped working as a manual scavenger, the thought uppermost in her mind was – again – hunger and livelihood. So, supported by the PACS partner, Mita borrowed Rs 500 and bought a small basket and some fruits. She then began selling them in the local market, walking from morning till late afternoon. This way, she was able to earn a small livelihood and it strengthened her belief that she could put her past behind for good.
After selling fruits for 6-7-months, Mita tried her hand at selling fish for some time before shifting to selling bangles and cosmetics. She leaves at 7am in the morning and is back by 6pm. “My earnings are about Rs 150-200 per day. It is enough to start me off, and I want to add to my effort by buying a handcart later, when I am more set in my new profession,” she says, gingerly showing us the colourful bangles in her basket.
And what if she or her husband face any medical emergency? “Oh, then I just sit it out or, if it really gets worse, borrow from the mahajan (moneylender) by paying an interest of Rs 10 for every Rs 100 borrowed.
But it the worst during festivals: sometimes, I just sit and cry because we can never celebrate.”
To source the bangles, Mita travels 2-km to Yousufpur, where small traders sell at wholesale prices. “But they don’t give credit – it is always an all-cash transaction, to be paid immediately,” she says.
When I started selling bangles, many women I knew who were still working as manual scavengers, told me they could not bring themselves to make the change. To them I always say “If you can carry 10-kilos of human excreta on your head everyday, then you can also carry 10-kilos of bangles”.
Now that she is aware of her rights, says Saifullah Khan, Town Area Coordinator, Mita has been asking why, at the panchayat level, safai karamchari’s (sanitation workers) were appointed from other castes but castes like hers – Rawat and Swacchakar, for example – was not included.
Then there are the old mindsets she must constantly battle. Says Anil Kumar, Programme Coordinator “Her neighbor – a Pandit – does not allow her to tie a rope to his boundary wall because he considers her ‘untouchable’ and says even the nail will ‘pollute’ his house. When she confronts him, he retorts “what is you caste that you even dare speak to me?” He does not even give her water in a crisis; on most days, he cleans his house and lets the water run in the street and collect near her gate, making walking difficult, especially for her old husband. He thinks nothing of throwing garbage or dirty water in front of her house. He says without batting an eyelid that he will keep on harassing her till she runs away. On many occasions, he has even cut her electricity connection so she is forced to go away. The price of her small plot is now Rs 25-lakh. We give her strength and tell her – even this will pass.”
Usha Yadav says as PACS tackles the challenge of untouchability and strives to secure livelihoods for the poor, small successes like that of Mita Rawat demonstrate the possibilities of enabling manual scavenger communities to generate sustainable livelihoods and self-employment for their families and make inclusive and equitable development a reality for many like her.