Classic Shit

(Editor’s note: our radiant sanitation & social justice blogger has been brought low, ironically by something resembling a nasty case of dysentery. While she would want to make clear that her plight is as nothing compared to that of the billions of people who suffer without proper access to the sanitary toilets and sewage systems we take for granted, she is nevertheless out of order this week and decidedly otherwise occupied. So in the style of old summer re-runs, we present a classic instalment of her “Oh Shit” column…)

Manual Scavengers: AKA Shit Removers

It’s time to get down and dirty to spark conversation about how people’s conditions – how they live, learn, work and play – lead to fundamental inequities in the rate of illness, degradation and death. I have decided to bypass polite discussion and dive straight into excreta. I’m talking about poop. Because, holy crap, there’s a lot of shit to talk about.

Last week, I stumbled upon “Lesser Humans,” a documentary by Stalin K about “manual scavenging,” which is the term used in India for the manual handling and removal of human excreta (i.e. shit). What I saw was completely shocking and unknown to me. The video is almost ten years old, and is still powerful, as the practice is still very much alive today.

Although legally banned through various laws, and by provisions of India’s constitution, this degrading and inhuman practice still exists both in urban and rural areas throughout India. According to the 2011 Census of India, there are still over 2.6 million dry latrines in the country where the human shit is manually cleaned by humans. Apart from these, there are over 1.3 million toilets where the human excreta is flushed into open drains, through toilets that are cleaned by human beings who strip down into their underwear and are physically lowered into the sewers to manually haul out the shit. Watch the video if you don’t believe me.

This degrarding work falls to Dalits, the world’s largest minority. They comprise about 16 percent of the Indian population, roughly 170 million people.  Untouchability is, essentially, the greatest ongoing human rights violation that the world knows nothing about. Imagine being raised to believe that the only job you were capable of or suitable to perform was handling other people’s shit – or worse, being immersed in it. Imagine what that would do to your mental well-being. Now imagine doing it every day and what that would do to your health.

Shit removers are not leading long, healthy, happy, lives. This disparity is part of a systemically ingrained system. And no one is talking about it because no one knows. Spread the word and help stop this shit.