I hail from a small town in the Malabar region of North Kerala. My growing up period spanned the years just before the onset of the Gulf boom, the latter having contributed in a big way,  to the prosperity of many households in the state.

     When my mind goes into flashback  mode, intermingled with all the hues and  sounds of  the sixties, there is one memory which still evokes a sense of deep shame. This is associated with the stench that used to emanate from the huge dump of shit , at one end of the maidan, where we kids learnt cycling. This was a somewhat huge bit of  uninterrupted  open space in the neighbourhood and a major part of our summer vacation was spent there.

     The time was when most of the old houses still had dry latrines. For those unfamiliar with this term, dry latrine is a toilet without the flushing facility. So the excreta had to be periodically collected manually by someone from the  scavenger community , with a broom and two pieces of tin mostly, and dumped in a basket or bucket, which they carried on their heads. This would then be transported  in wheelbarrows,  and transferred to drums piled on to a lorry , or carried individually to be dumped  in an empty bit of land in the town.  As luck would have it, this empty land in our town happened to be  near the place where we lived. The truck would pass by our house everyday at around 11 O’clock in the morning and the stench would remain in the air for a long time afterwards. The discomfort and guilt of being part of a society, where we condemn a particular section of society to collect and carry other peoples’ excreta, has never left me. Writing about this will not absolve me either.

     Last year, at the book fair, I came across a book titled “Endless Filth”, published by “Books for Change”, a unit of Action Aid, Karnataka Project.(www.booksforchange.net). Written by mari marcel thekaekara (the name has been reproduced  as it appears on the cover, without the initial  letters being in the capital font), it is a detailed narrative of the life of the safaikaramcharis. Reading it,  one wondered what all this hype of “India shining”was all about, when even after sixty years of independence, manual scavenging is still a reality in almost all the states and five to eight lakh people still had to continue with the practice of  carrying shit.

               In Kerala, now for many years,  the system of manual scavenging has been done away with. Increased social awareness brought about by eduation, increase in the general prosperity and the effect of leftist idealogy led governments, all may have contributed to this. I can only guess as I was quite ignorant about all the causes and implications when the process of change was actually being affected.

             But the amalgamation did take place , even as we grew up and it makes me proud to belong to  a state where dignity was restored to a community who were till then existing on the fringes. The children of these communities started going to school along with the others, where in all probability , they may have had to face taunts and problems of attitudes. The adults were given alternate employment and the entire process of rehabilitation did take place in a remarkably short period. 

      “Endless Filth” documents the daily routine of some of those still engaged in manual scavenging in the other states. Leelaben, from Paliyad village, Dhanduka Tehsil, Gujarat, describes her work thus, “In the rainy season, it is really bad. Water mixes with the shit and  when we carry it on our heads, it drips from the baskets on to our clothes, our bodies, our faces. When I return home, I find it difficult to eat food sometimes. The smell never gets out of my clothes, my hair. But then in summer there is often no water to wash your hands before eating. It is difficult to say which is worse.”

       In 1993, the Rao Government passed the Abolition of Manual Scavenging Act-making the existence of dry toilets punishable by law.  A google search  establishes  that  the practice is still going on although the various state governments stoutly deny the same.  The google search also threw up  this heartening bit of news …that a bunch of students and faculty from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology , was developing a ecological sanitation toilet which would change the life of this  downtrodden community in Paliyad .

      To read more , here is the link.

epaper.timesofindia.com/Repository/ml.asp?Ref=Q0FQLzIwMDcvMDYvMTcjQXIwMTYwMA==&Mode=HTML&Locale=e... - 8k -