IF YOU think your job stinks, spare a thought for the men who spend their days toiling in the sewage systems of India’s crowded cities, removing rubbish and unclogging sanitation lines with their bare hands.

That is the weekly reality of nearly 30,000 people in the city of Mumbai known as conservancy workers. They are almost entirely from the Dalit caste group — a Hindi word meaning oppressed — and they’re the ones who clean the gutters, collect the garbage, sweep the street and manually clear out the sewer.

No city represents the stark inequality of India’s caste system more than the financial capital of India. The waterfront city has some of the most expensive real estate in the world and the highest number of millionaires and billionaires in the country. The streets are filled with Mercedes and Aston Martins, but below them, under the tarmac, men wade through pools of human excrement in order to help clear the huge amount of waste running through the sewer system.

Indian documentary photographer Sudharak Olwe has captured remarkable images of these workers performing their unsavoury task.

“Without exception, all of them despise their work,” he says.

Workers descend down the thousands of manholes throughout the city and use metal scrapers, brooms or their bare hands to clear drainage and sanitation lines to allow the excrement to flow freely. They are paid around $7 a day and will often work up to 12 hours.

Many believe the workers are required to tend the basic social services of the city that remain vastly underdeveloped as the city’s population explodes. But despite efforts to improve their conditions, private companies continue to hire the Dalit workers with little regard for their welfare.

After rubbing themselves with coconut oil, many workers descend into the subterraneum cesspool with little more than a helmet. This unfortunately reality exists despite laws and court orders to ensure workers are supplied with gloves, masks and other protective gear.

“We just apply oil, there is no safety gear,” sewer worker Sunil Pawar told Al Jazeera last month. “Also there is poisonous gas, but this is our job.”

Activists say that the poor conditions of the job persist due to the widespread apathy held by society towards the lower caste of Indian society — a group formerly known as the untouchables, and not in a good way.

Not only is it filthy, unhealthy and socially embarrassing for those involved, it is also very dangerous.

A study conducted by the Mumbai-based Tata Institute of Social Sciences found 80 per cent of sewer workers died by the age of 60. Even more concerning, in Mumbai they found, on average, 20 sewer workers died each month.

A mixture of noxious gases develops in the underground manholes which can leave workers unconscious if they stay down there too long. The poisonous fumes have also been linked to long term health defects including diabetes and tuberculosis, experts say.

Often before they enter, workers conduct a test to determine the amount of oxygen in the manholes. They lower a candle into the sewer system, and only if there is enough oxygen to keep the flame burning, will they enter.

“Filth and human excrement are a given, but sometimes we come across a dead dog or a dead rat as well,” a sewer worker named Manu Pawar told the Los Angeles Times in 2014.

He said along with the unsanitary conditions, broken glass lurks in the pitch black underground. Any cuts and grazes are almost a certainty to become infected.

Those who carry out these jobs say they are resigned to their fate due to their lack of education. They struggle away in the most unbearable conditions imaginable in hopes their children will not have to do the same.