Swachh Yes, But What About The Workers?

Each afternoon, before Sunita (name changed) sits down for lunch with a small group of friends, she carefully takes out a piece of light green soap covered in plastic, unwraps it and proceeds to wash her hands with it, over and over again. Like most people, she uses her hands to partake of two square meals during the day and places a premium on hygiene.

But Sunita and her group of friends are no ordinary office-goers, who work in the comfort of pristine environs with functioning air-conditioners. Sunita is a municipal worker (safai karmachari) in Delhi, who collects and sorts several stinking kilograms of garbage that the city churns out with mechanical regularity. She also does all this work with her bare hands, devoid of any kind of protective gear, like gloves, masks, gumboots and disinfectants.

Sunita is just one of the 48,000 municipal workers in the national capital. A huge proportion of municipal workers in Delhi are from the Balmiki community. This community has traditionally been involved in so-called menial labour. Despite being a vote bank and promised amelioration in its existing conditions, there has been no improvement in their standard of living. Even when it comes to their professional work -- handling domestic garbage and other, harmful municipal waste -- they are at the receiving end of exploitation.

Ill-equipped (no gloves, masks and gum-boots) and ill-paid, these municipal workers have to also face the brunt of medical issues arising as a direct result of handling hazardous waste/garbage/refuse. Over 400 safai karamcharis — close to 1% of 48,000 — die each year. Most of them suffer from tetanus, hepatitis, kidney ailments, skin problems and respiratory diseases.

Most of them die before the age of retirement. Despite assurances by successive governments, nothing has changed and the status quo seems set to continue for these hapless workers who suffer at various levels to keep Delhi clean.

While their recent strike has brought the issue of unpaid salaries into focus, nobody seems concerned about the continued apathy towards Delhi’s municipal workers.

In 2004, the MCD finally decided to start a health scheme for its safai karamcharis, most of whom die at an early age because of exposure to hazardous waste. Figures from 2004 revealed that 250 safai karamcharis died while on duty, with most deaths taking place while manually loading garbage at dhalaos (garbage dumps), sanitary landfill sites and desilting drains. The MCD was supposed to spend Rs 1 crore annually under the scheme. The corpus amount was meant to be utilised for conducting regular medical check-ups, besides providing anti-tetanus and anti-hepatitis vaccinations to the municipal workers.

The situation on the ground, however, is alarmingly different. “We do not even have a proper place to sit and have lunch. Are we supposed to eat at the dhalao, where it is impossible for most people to stand even for a minute?” asks Rajjo Devi (name changed), a sanitation worker in west Delhi. When this reporter asked her if they were provided gloves, masks and gumboots, she stared at me incredulously and said, “No. We have to sometimes buy even the disinfectants on our own. We carry soaps to wash hands, even water to wash our hands with. They give us nothing.”

All attempts to contact concerned MCD officials proved futile. Our queries either kept getting directed to ‘seniors’ and then redirected to ‘juniors’ or the call was simply disconnected on hearing the nature of our questions.

We tried to contact Cheena Ji Maharaj, head of the Valmiki Sadan and patron of Aam Aadmi Party’s SC/ST Wing. On reaching his home on Mandir Marg in New Delhi, we were told he was out on a social call. After that, repeated attempts to contact him on his mobile proved futile. In December 2014, as several prominent Dalit figures in Delhi joined the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), Arvind Kejriwal began his speech with a tribute to Cheena Ji Maharaj, even suggesting that his opinion was taken considered while deciding on party’s candidates.

“Cheena Ji Maharaj is like our guru. With his aashirwaad, we can take this organisation forward. Out of seven ministers (in the AAP cabinet), two were from the community. When other parties refused or argued against it, we regularised workers. Only the AAP can give you respect,” Kejriwal had said. It seems incongruous that Cheena Ji Maharaj is unable to ameliorate the conditions of Delhi’s safai karamcharis despite enjoying so much obvious clout with the Delhi Chief Minister.

Delhi’s municipal waste consists of 40% organic, 30% recyclable and 20% inert material. MCD is responsible for 95% of the city, with the New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC) responsible for 3% and the Cantonment Board for 2%.

Since the segregation of waste by households never took off, this task is performed by safai karamcharis and unorganised ‘rag-pickers’. In the absence of segregated garbage, they are also exposed to hazardous waste from hospitals and industries. This underprivileged and overexploited section of society has to deal with hospital waste and is also exposed to gases like carbon monoxide and methane while desilting drains.

To deal with the noxious nature of their job, most municipal workers take refuge in intoxicants – from gutkha/tambakhu (tobacco) to alcohol. “The stench is too much to deal with. It’s everywhere, wherever I go. I take it home from the dhalao and it stays with us throughout our lives. Gutkha/tambakhu are helpful initially, but then our teeth start rotting and there’s more stench. Stench is a part of our lives,” says Madhav Ram (name changed), a fourth generation safai karamchari.

The story of the safai karamchari is, at first, that of exploitation of the poorest of the poor, then of denying them the small means to make their hazardous profession less so and finally, of turning a blind eye to the suffering and in most cases, death, of these thankless workers.

In this light, then, if our household waste is regularly collected and disposed off and Delhi, the national capital, stays clean, it’s nothing short of a miracle.