The Other Side of the Wall

“I left this work a year ago, but the stench hasn’t left me.” – Testimony of Kamlesh who started this work at an early age.

The day everyone in India gets a toilet to use, I shall know that our country has reached the pinnacle of progress. (Jawaharlal Nehru). A lot of people are not familiar with the word Manual Scavengers let alone their jobs, especially those living in an urban space in the comforts of their home. Despite a clear evidence of Indian Railways, the largest employer of Manual Scavengers (Indiaspend, 2015), which make use of dry latrines where human excrement is dumped on the railway tracks which is later cleaned manually. Is it the ignorance and active denial which has led people to believe that no such thing as Manual scavenging exists? Is the topic too difficult to talk about? Or have we failed as a society in acknowledging the real issues? Bhasha Singh has rightfully answered these questions in her book Unseen: The truth about India’s Manual Scavengers.