Skip to main content

Swachh Gujarat? Manual scavenging continues admist CAG indictment, loud govt claims to the contrary

By A Representative
These photographs were taken by the Ahmedabad-based Dalit rights NGO Navsarjan Trust's senior activist, Natubhai Parmar, on November 13, two days after India’s Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) report slammed the Gujarat government for the failure of its “Swachh Gujarat” (Clean Gujarat) campaign and existence of “several cases” of manual scavenging, banned in the country. The snaps were taken in three towns, Surendranagar, Wadhwan and Sayala of Gujarat, and a grim reminder that there is no impact of the Swachh Bharat campaign in Gujarat and manual scavenging continues unabated, despite official denials. CAG had also regretted that though the Gujarat government was asked to take "appropriate and swift action" to verify "each and every case" of manual scavenging, CAG did not provide a satisfactory answer to Government of India.

Comments

Anonymous said…
We as a nation with Manu Smiriti and apartheid has yet to learn Dignity of human beings. We can shout and blame other nations about our poverty but cannot blame our cast system and some of our superstitions except on ourselves.
Why is that we in India are not capable to invent equipment to clean human waste? Do we think that such innovation will bring no fame but shame.
We have to break away from this cycle of untouchability. Modi can have many AARTIS at Kashi but will that wash our sins of inhumanity. WHY NO VOICE FOR PEOPLE WHO SERVE US AND KEEP US HEALTHY
November 14, 2014
Post a Comment

TRENDING

Xi Jinping’s visit to USA: Recognition that China can't be contained?

By Vijay Prashad   President Xi Jinping’s forthcoming visit to the United States must be understood as more than an encounter between two heads of state, but it must be seen as an encounter between two possible futures. In one future, the United States imposes a spiral of confrontation against China. Trade disputes harden into economic warfare, then economic warfare intensifies into technological blockades, technological blockades produce military encirclement, and finally military encirclement creates incidents, and incidents the danger of becoming an unimaginable war.
Post a Comment
»

Swaminarayan, untouchability and the 'we are not Hindu' argument

By Rajiv Shah   Following my blog on why the Eiffel Tower authorities should take all the blame for giving in to the Swaminarayan sadhus ’ bizarre demand to “invisibilise” women, including its female staff, during their visit to the internationally renowned Paris tourist centre on September 5, an interesting comment by one of the top academics drew my attention to something I vaguely knew about one of India’s most powerful and richest religious sects.
Post a Comment
»

From margins to microphones: The rise of Dalit hip-hop in India

By Tersina Maria Toppo*  A protest does not always arrive as a slogan shouted from a street corner. Sometimes, it arrives on a beat. A microphone replaces the megaphone, a music video becomes a public square, and the smartphone becomes the space where a history once pushed to the margins is narrated, debated, and shared.
2 comments
»