-PTI The machines have been provided to skilled manual scavengers making them ‘sani-entrepreneurs’, officials said. Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal flagged off a fleet of 200 sewer cleaning machines in New Delhi on Thursday. The machines have been provided to skilled manual scavengers making them ‘sani-entrepreneurs’, officials said. “It is a historic day for Delhi to start this initiative and ensuring safety and dignity of human life. These machines will put an end to...

-The Indian Express The SECC has identified a total of 1.82 lakh households where at least one person is employed in manual scavenging in rural India, numbers which have been dismissed as gross underestimate by organisations working in the area. The Ministry of Rural Development (MoRD) has issued orders to all states to use the Socio-Economic Caste Census (SECC) so as to identify persons working as manual scavengers, persons with disabilities,...

-TheWire.in Government documents and budget data reveal that the prime minister's feet-washing act is just optics. On Sunday, a video uploaded by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on his personal Twitter account showed him washing the feet of four safai karamacharis in Prayagraj, Uttar Pradesh. Within two hours, 19,000 Twitter users had liked it, 7,200 had retweeted it and 1,700 had commented on the link. Uploading the video, Modi had tweeted that washing the...

-The Indian Express In the recent exercise, state governments, tasked with verifying 54,929 manual scavengers identified across 170 select districts in stage one of the counting process, have confirmed involvement of only 25,015 people in the job in the final verification stage. New Delhi: State governments have denied the existence of more than half the number of people identified as being involved in manual scavenging in the course of a Central...

-The Telegraph Despite being prohibited the practice remains widespread and unmodernised, and violators are not punished The death of five sanitation workers in Delhi is a grim reminder of the hostile conditions that confront manual scavenging in India. Manual scavenging has been prohibited by law. Yet, it remains unchecked. There is also a distinct lack of effort to make this objectionable occupation safe and dignified. This is the net result of institutional...