November 19 is World Toilet Day. India’s massive five-year all-hands-on-deck Clean India Mission to construct latrines for all has just ended. The Government reports that 100 million additional toilets have been constructed via this campaign; these are mostly not connected to waterborne sewer systems. Just over 30% of India’s urban population has access to sewers, though most city plans include elaborate plans for sewerage. Sewers are supposed to be underground and unseen, and are not supposed to need manual labour to dispose of the waste. But sewers get blocked and have to be unblocked, overflow and have to be cleaned out, break and have to be repaired. Several cities have introduced mechanisation to fix major blockages and to avoid people having to jump into the sewer system when problems arise, but sewer management remains quite a challenge.

The sewers are often densely networked, the pipes are old, the streets are narrow. Water and Sewerage Boards are just overwhelmed with the number of demands and complaints they get on a daily basis, and they can’t be everywhere at once. Deaths of sewer workers in India’s cities continue to occur. Sewers continue to be unblocked with makeshift equipment such as bamboo poles and iron rods; accumulated silt often needs to be cleaned out by hand or shovel. And so human labour, which in this case is inevitably Dalit labour, keeps India’s sewers flowing. Technically, this is not “manual scavenging”. But what is it, then? On this World Toilet Day, we bring to light the labour of India’s sewer workers – those who do the unclean work that a Clean India relies on. We tell their stories through the voice of Sharada Prasad, who followed the men as they worked.