Clean house: on India's septic tank desludging

The Hindu

24-07-2025

Behind the hazardous cleaning deaths of 150 people in 2022 and 2023, a social audit of 54 of which the Ministry of Social Justice has tabled in Parliament, lies a deleterious business model. Local contractors had hired 38; only five were on a government payroll. The rest were public sector workers 'loaned' to private employers, obscuring liability. Progress on this front has lagged despite the Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation Act 2013, court orders, Swachh Bharat advisories, and the 2023 National Action for Mechanised Sanitation Ecosystem (NAMASTE) scheme. A 2024 Parliament reply said 57,758 workers were engaged in hazardous cleaning nationwide but only 16,791 PPE kits were supplied. Fewer than 14,000 had received health cards and only 837 safety workshops had been conducted in 4,800 urban local bodies. There are at least two bright spots, however. In Odisha, identified workers have PPE kits and access to mechanised desludging vehicles and Tamil Nadu has piloted sewer robots in Chennai to clean over 5,000 manholes. Technology and political will can thus deliver the desired results but little has reached most districts. Experts also flagged a near-complete lack of data on rural sanitation workers.
India's real problem is enforcement. Industry members have said most underground infrastructure can be cleaned robotically if capital subsidies and operator training expand, yet government tenders often solicit manual bids. Most emergency response sanitation units are paper tigers. Only ₹14 crore has been released so far under the NAMASTE scheme, insufficient to mechanise sewer cleaning in even one major city. In the event of a worker death, police routinely book the lowest ranking supervisor or classify the death as an accident. The Supreme Court has asked for offending contracts to be cancelled and monetary liabilities imposed on principal employers, but local bodies are still to notify such rules. Two-thirds of validated workers are also Dalits, yet rehabilitation packages rarely include housing or scholarships that might help families exit contemptible occupations. Women who still sweep dry latrines receive even less policy attention. Among other measures, urban local bodies must mechanise sewer-cleaning post haste, and make it a licensed trade, and operating without a valid certificate a cognisable offence. Loans for workers to operate the machines that replace manual entry should be upscaled and linked to guaranteed service contracts from municipalities. Finally, the national government should include septic tank desludging under the Swachh Bharat rural budget and extend NAMASTE profiling to gram panchayats.