A sanitation worker submerged in an underground sewage canal, clearing out a blockage. A group of four or five sanitation workers had come there to do the same. “The workers are often related since they are recruited from the same caste, the Arunthathiyars,” said Kumar. “Sanitation workers are often forced to be completely submerged under human waste to clear blockages. Nauseating work situations such as these have forced many to take to alcohol consumption. Excessive alcoholism has become an area of particular concern for the Arunthathiyar community.”
Two sanitation workers clearing a blocked open drainage canal in Guindy, a locality in Chennai. The equipment that sanitation workers use to clear such large blockages is limited to the metal pail seen in the picture and a shovel. These blockages often consist of many glass bottles, which break and tear the hands and feet of the workers.
Manual scavengers in the Pudukottai district of Tamil Nadu state. Since most contractors or employees fail to provide adequate safety gear, the workers are forced to use plastic bags as makeshift gloves.
A manual scavenger reaching in with his bare hands to clear out a blockage in a public toilet at one of the largest and busiest buses stops in Chennai. In addition to sewer canals, “untouchable” manual scavengers are also made to clean open drainage canals, septic tanks (human waste), and public toilets, including the toilets in trains.
Suganya, the wife of the deceased 24-year-old Arunkumar, kisses her dead husband in 2019. Suganya was 22 years old at the time and had a seven-month-old baby, Dhiksha. They had been together for eight years. After Arunkumar’s father lost his eyesight and injured his leg in an accident, Arunkumar took on the responsibility of earning for his family of four. His mother was also a sanitation worker at the government-run hospital in Royapettah, Chennai. Arunkumar died inside a sewer while attempting to rescue his brother, who had entered earlier and lost consciousness. While his brother survived, Arunkumar didn’t. Most of the youth in the locality where Arunkumar ad his family lived were also manual scavengers.
The body of Mari, a 33-year-old sanitation worker who died in the Mathampattu village in Tamil Nadu state. He, too, was a victim of the lethal gas build-ups in a sewage tank. The hand is that of his wife, Anushya. He had three daughters, with a fourth born after his death.
People mourn the death of Mari, a 33-year-old sanitation worker, in 2019. The young girl below the lady in blue is Mari’s eldest daughter, Elavarasi, who was 10 years old at the time. There have been multiple reports of Dalit students being forced to sit apart from other students and to clean the toilets in schools. This leads to the students dropping out of school.
Sanitation worker Mari’s brother, Shakthivel, carries his body back home. They live by the river, in a secluded place away from the village. This small pathway, flanked by shrubs, is the the only way to reach their home.
Thamayandhi, who was married to a sanitation worker named R. Mathavan, stands alongside her two children after her husband’s death on 16 August 2019, in Tamil Nadu. The state government promised Thamayandhi a government job so that the family can sustain itself. “However, owing to her caste, it is likely that she too will be employed as a manual scavenger. I asked her to pose with photos from their wedding,” said Kumar.
Sanitation worker Mari’s body is lowered into his grave. Even the graves of these workers are separate from those of others since they belong to an untouchable caste. The compensation of INR 10 lakh ($13,781), stipulated by the 1993 Act, is often delayed and families face various hurdles in receiving the compensatory amount.