By Rajiv Shah
The Print has carried an interesting story, headlined “The Great Indian Sanitation Scam. General castes bag govt jobs, Valmikis do the work”, with the sub-head, “Across India, proxy, ‘badli’, or ‘ewaj’ work is rampant in sanitation jobs.” Authored by Shubhangi Misra, and though rather too long, I got interested in it as I was personally witness to an outrageous event, on how ‘upper’ castes react to sanitation work, which took place in June 2016 in Ahmedabad.
The Print has carried an interesting story, headlined “The Great Indian Sanitation Scam. General castes bag govt jobs, Valmikis do the work”, with the sub-head, “Across India, proxy, ‘badli’, or ‘ewaj’ work is rampant in sanitation jobs.” Authored by Shubhangi Misra, and though rather too long, I got interested in it as I was personally witness to an outrageous event, on how ‘upper’ castes react to sanitation work, which took place in June 2016 in Ahmedabad.
The Print story points to how in 2018, the Rajasthan government introduced a reservation-based system for sanitation jobs, setting quotas for the general category, OBC, SC/ST, and others, even as “Valmikis, who have been doing this work for generations, were overlooked.” The result is that, “members of socially dominant castes are taking the government jobs of sweepers but not doing the actual work.”
It quotes a sanitation worker of Jaipur, Pushpa, as stating, “The general category is snatching our jobs. For us, this work is a majboori (compulsion) -- we have to feed our kids and have no option to work anywhere else. They want our jobs but they don’t want to do our jobs... If I had a government job, I’d make at least Rs 20,000 a month, medical insurance, and pension. I have been forced to work for Rs 5,000 a month instead.”
Calling it a modern twist on old caste prejudice in order to keep the most marginalised at the bottom, the story is just the opposite of what happened in June 2016 in Ahmedabad following an advertisement issued by a top NGO, Human Development and Resource Centre (HDRC), which functions from within the prestigious St Xavier’s College campus, just a kilometre away from the Gujarat University.
The advertisement by HDRC, formerly Behavioral Science Centre, was for the post of safai karmacharis (sweepers), insisted that it would give preference to the "unreserved category", specifically mentioning the castes whose members would be preferred across religions -- “preferred” categories were for appointment as sweeper were identified in the advertisement – “Brahmins, Kshatriyas, Banias, Patels, Jains, Sayeds, Pathans, Syrian Christians, Parsis”!
The advertisement, dated April 6, 2016, signed by the then HDRC director Prasad Chacko, turned into a full-blown controversy full two months later, with around 50 hooligans forcing their way into the Xavier’s campus, right up to the HDRC building, pelting stones, breaking windows panes, and damaging flower pots, calling it an “insult” to the dominant castes. “How dare they want us to prefer to work for sanitation work... That’s not our job, hasn’t ever been”, I heard one of them as loudly saying.
While some Gujarat activists sought to immediately blame the attack on the HDRC building on “allies of the RSS and other Sangh Parivar affiliates, Dalit insiders told me that it wasn’t they who led the attack. In fact, “the leadership of the attack was provided by an active member of the National Students Union of India (NSUI), student-wing of the Congress” – something even a Congress spokesperson confirmed to me.
The spokesman, however, hastened to add, the person who led the attack “is not an NSUI leader... We have nothing to do with the attack.” When asked whether the Congress would make a statement to condemning the attack, the spokesperson had the cheek to tell me, “Whatever has happened is unfortunate. But we do not want to get into it. We do not think a statement is desirable at this point of time.”
Calling it a modern twist on old caste prejudice in order to keep the most marginalised at the bottom, the story is just the opposite of what happened in June 2016 in Ahmedabad following an advertisement issued by a top NGO, Human Development and Resource Centre (HDRC), which functions from within the prestigious St Xavier’s College campus, just a kilometre away from the Gujarat University.
The advertisement by HDRC, formerly Behavioral Science Centre, was for the post of safai karmacharis (sweepers), insisted that it would give preference to the "unreserved category", specifically mentioning the castes whose members would be preferred across religions -- “preferred” categories were for appointment as sweeper were identified in the advertisement – “Brahmins, Kshatriyas, Banias, Patels, Jains, Sayeds, Pathans, Syrian Christians, Parsis”!
The advertisement, dated April 6, 2016, signed by the then HDRC director Prasad Chacko, turned into a full-blown controversy full two months later, with around 50 hooligans forcing their way into the Xavier’s campus, right up to the HDRC building, pelting stones, breaking windows panes, and damaging flower pots, calling it an “insult” to the dominant castes. “How dare they want us to prefer to work for sanitation work... That’s not our job, hasn’t ever been”, I heard one of them as loudly saying.
While some Gujarat activists sought to immediately blame the attack on the HDRC building on “allies of the RSS and other Sangh Parivar affiliates, Dalit insiders told me that it wasn’t they who led the attack. In fact, “the leadership of the attack was provided by an active member of the National Students Union of India (NSUI), student-wing of the Congress” – something even a Congress spokesperson confirmed to me.
The spokesman, however, hastened to add, the person who led the attack “is not an NSUI leader... We have nothing to do with the attack.” When asked whether the Congress would make a statement to condemning the attack, the spokesperson had the cheek to tell me, “Whatever has happened is unfortunate. But we do not want to get into it. We do not think a statement is desirable at this point of time.”
I approached Prasad Chacko who had signed the advertisement, and this is what he tells me, “When we put up the ad for a safai kamdar post giving 'special preference' to the dominant castes (general/unreserved including the dominant non-Hindu communities), they became violent and threatened me and the St Xavier's management of dire consequences. They sought my removal.”
Not only ‘upper’ caste Hindus, even the dominant castes of Muslims objected to the advertisement, he said: “The Saiyeds who consider themselves as the descendants of the Prophet, considered this as an insult to Islam and filed a case against me; likewise the Syrian Christians (Malayalis) sent a legal notice.”
Stating that what is happening in Rajasthan how has been happening in Gujarat, too, he said, “The ugly casteist mentality of the Savarnas has not changed at all; they do not have any issue appropriating the jobs of safai kamdars while appointing proxies or getting comfortable postings. I have heard this from the Valmikis themselves. In places like airports or modern government offices the sanitation/ cleaning work (with access to better and hygienic machines/devices) would be captured by dominant castes.”
Gujarat’s top Dalit rights leader Martin Macwan confirmed this, stating, government sanitation work is found to be cornered in the state much in the same way as in Rajasthan. “This has happened in a big way in the Sulabh Sauchalay programme. And this is rampant in private contracting. We saw this reflected during discussions with Valmikis while we were in the process of making the film 'Lesser Human.”
Stating that what is happening in Rajasthan how has been happening in Gujarat, too, he said, “The ugly casteist mentality of the Savarnas has not changed at all; they do not have any issue appropriating the jobs of safai kamdars while appointing proxies or getting comfortable postings. I have heard this from the Valmikis themselves. In places like airports or modern government offices the sanitation/ cleaning work (with access to better and hygienic machines/devices) would be captured by dominant castes.”
Gujarat’s top Dalit rights leader Martin Macwan confirmed this, stating, government sanitation work is found to be cornered in the state much in the same way as in Rajasthan. “This has happened in a big way in the Sulabh Sauchalay programme. And this is rampant in private contracting. We saw this reflected during discussions with Valmikis while we were in the process of making the film 'Lesser Human.”
Stalin K Padma, the film maker and activist who made the film "Lesser Humans", tells me, he came across several Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC) employed sanitation workers "who told me during the research phase of the film about similar practices in AMC. A couple AMC sanitation supervisors I met with also corroborated this 'badli' way."
While not keeping this in the film itself because he wanted to focus the film on manual scavenging, he says, "But I made it a point to speak about this phenomenon of upper caste securing jobs as sanitation workers while being assigned non-filthy jobs during every post-screening discussion to drive home the point of how deep-rooted the caste feelings are."
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