collecting human waste and cow dung in India
February 16th, 2007 by smidge
Okay. A lot of shit going on lately. So here’s an interesting article about end-stream scavenging - mostly of human waste - in India. Here’s a coupla tidbits in case you don’t want to read the whole thing:
According to government estimates, there are more than 600,000 manual scavengers nationwide.
Activist groups working to abolish the practice put the number at around 1.3 million and say there is a widespread ignorance of the ban even among government officials.
A majority of people in the profession are “dalits” who have been at the bottom of Hinduism’s ancient caste hierarchy in which people were divided on the basis of their profession. Priests top the ladder, followed by warriors and traders.
Dalits did jobs considered lowly and impure, such as scavenging and disposing of dead bodies and hence were treated as untouchables.
Discrimination on the basis of caste is banned, but India’s nearly 16 million dalits remain among the poorest, despite affirmative action plans by the government.
Among low-caste professions are trash collectors called kabadiwallahs who buy and sell refuse such as paper and plastic while others perform a variety of manual chores under the term sweeper but which can include cleaning public toilets.
Even among the dalits, there are sub-castes: the cobbler and barber communities are considered higher than the scavengers, most of whom are women.
Estimates of India’s recycling rate hover around 90%. This is one way they do it.
And here’s a video I shot once in India of a girl doing something not quite as nasty: collecting cow dung for fuel. Enjoy.
