Over 370 deaths in 5 years: How many more till manual scavenging ends?

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said the government would employ technology for cleaning sewer systems and septic tanks, and eliminate the need for manual cleaning both through technology and legislation in her Budget speech on February 1. But, even though a law to ban the manual cleaning of sewers was passed in 1993, more than 370 sanitation workers have died in the five years to 2019 while manually cleaning sewers. Developing technology to eliminate human involvement in sewer cleaning in India is still in the nascent stages and caste is a major barrier to eliminating manual cleaning.

Unimplemented legislation

The direct