Danger in the sewer

Why in the News

Four sanitation workers have died in Ujjain, Madhya Pradesh, cleaning a hotel’s food-waste chamber. The deaths show that laws, Supreme Court orders, government programmes and mechanised cleaning technology have not stopped India losing workers to foreseeable and largely preventable hazards.

What is hazardous sewer cleaning, and how does the law treat it?

1. What it is: Hazardous cleaning means a worker physically entering a sewer or septic tank to clear it. Workers inside are exposed to noxious gases, poisonous fumes trapped there.
2. Legal distinction: Since 2013 the law has treated hazardous cleaning of sewers and septic tanks as separate from manual scavenging, the manual cleaning of excreta from insanitary latrines.
3. Governing law: The Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation Act, 2013 and its Rules restrict manual cleaning.
4. Who is affected: Members of historically marginalised castes are overrepresented in these jobs, so the risk falls along caste lines.
5. The takeaway: A legal ban on manual scavenging has not removed the danger, because workers still go down into sewers and septic tanks.

What have the courts ordered?

1. Safai Karamchari Andolan (2014): The Supreme Court laid down requirements to protect workers who clean sewers and septic tanks.
2. Dr. Balram Singh (2023): The Court strengthened those requirements. Outsourced sewer-cleaning contracts must not involve workers entering sewers.
3. Higher compensation: The same ruling raised compensation for a death to Rs 30 lakh per worker.
4. City-level ban: A 2025 order sought to end manual sewer cleaning in the four metropolitan cities and in Bengaluru and Hyderabad.

Why do the deaths continue?

1. Official claim of elimination: Since at least 2021 the government has said manual cleaning of insanitary latrines has ended. Administrative bodies feel no urgency to inspect municipalities and private establishments.
2. Contractor evasion: Private contractors and municipal bodies violate the Act’s restrictions. They evade liability by hiring undocumented daily-wage workers, so no employer answers for a death.
3. Persistent toll: Death counts from Parliament and the National Commission for Safai Karamcharis (NCSK), the national body monitoring sanitation workers’ welfare, have never fallen close to zero.

What does the NAMASTE scheme get wrong?

1. Aims versus outcomes: The National Action for Mechanised Sanitation Ecosystem (NAMASTE) scheme is meant to move sewer cleaning from hands to machines. Its outcomes fall well short.
2. Assistance over prevention: The state maximises help, such as distributing safety kits, instead of cutting the situations that kill workers. This is its fundamental error.

Challenges

1. Unreliable death count: The Safai Karamchari Andolan, a sanitation workers’ movement, has repeatedly alleged severe under-reporting, so the true toll is unknown.
2. Defiance of court orders: Notices went to 15 Chief Secretaries for disobeying the 2023 order, including on compensation.
3. Urban-centred scheme: NAMASTE is centred on urban local bodies, so hazardous cleaning outside cities sits beyond its main reach.
4. Unused technology: Mechanised cleaning equipment exists, yet employers still send workers into sewers by hand.

Way Forward

1. Formal employment: Municipal bodies and contractors should employ sanitation workers on record with social security across caste lines, so liability for a death cannot be evaded.
2. No-entry contracts: Every sewer-cleaning contract should bar worker entry and pay only for machine cleaning.
3. Inspection drive: District administrations should resume inspections of municipalities and private establishments such as hotels.
4. Prevention metric: Judge NAMASTE by the fall in hazardous entries, not by the number of kits distributed.
5. Single verified count: The NCSK should publish one verified annual count of sewer and septic tank deaths.

Conclusion

Sewer deaths persist because the state measures its response by aid delivered and by a declared end to manual scavenging, not by how many workers still go below ground. Whether hazardous entries actually fall, rather than assistance rising, is the test the courts and the government now face.

Key numbers

1. Deaths, 2014 to 2025: 859 sanitation workers died in sewer and septic tank work (Parliament and NCSK data).
2. Deaths, 2019 to mid-2026: 498.
3. Deaths, 2021-26: 332 across 18 States and Union Territories.
4. Deaths, 1993 to 2025: 1,350.

Back2Basics: NAMASTE scheme

1. Ministry: Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment.
2. Aims: Mechanised cleaning of sewers and septic tanks, and the profiling and rehabilitation of sanitation workers.
3. Proposed extension: The Ministry has proposed extending it to rural India and to drain, sewage treatment plant and faecal sludge workers, at about Rs 498.73 crore to 2030-31.

Matching Previous Year Question

“[2016] Rashtriya Garima Abhiyaan’ is a national campaign to (a) rehabilitate the homeless and destitute persons and provide them with suitable sources of livelihood (b) release the sex workers from their practice and provide them with alternative sources of livelihood (c) eradicate the practice of manual scavenging and rehabilitate the manual scavengers (d) release the bonded labourers from their bondage and rehabilitate them ANSWER: (c)”