[Reader-list] Filth of tradition continues...

[Kshmendra Kaul]

More temples than schools in the public sphere? It is a disgusting shame for India (my country) whichever part of India it might be. No wonder we are in such a mess.
 
Manual scavenging I understand (from a Blog quoted below) was banned in 1993.
 
If Narendra Modi's words have not been quoted out of context and are the essence of his proudly stated belief, he should have been hauled up in a  Court of Law. Apart from any other penalty/punishment levied on him, he should have been asked "to undertake Community Service as a manual scavenger for 8x7x52 hours". 
 
That brings me to the Madhukar Shukla's Blog 'Alternate Perspective'. He has given some horrifying statistics (about Manhole Workers) in a 06/12/2007 piece "Caste-Discrimination: From Subliminal to Sublimated". He quotes from various sources:
 
http://alternativeperspective.blogspot.com/2007/12/caste-discrimination-from-subliminal-to.html
 
QUOTE
 
    Behind such imageries and descriptions, however, lurks the living reality of the "Life Inside a Black Hole" (Tehelka Magazine, Issue 47(4), Dec 08, 2007), which can be too stark and unsettling for common human consciousness to live with - And thus, the attempts to mask it, discount it, trivialise it...

Excerpts from the article:

"What is the weather really like inside a manhole? What happens to the shit, piss and other waste flushed down by 18.02 percent of the billion- plus population?... At least 22,327 Dalits of a sub-community die doing sanitation work every year. Safai Kamgar Vikas Sangh, a body representing sanitation workers of the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), sought data under the Right to Information Act in 2006, and found that 288 workers had died in 2004-05, 316 in 2003-04, and 320 in 2002-03, in just 14 of the 24 wards of the BMC. About 25 deaths every month. These figures do not include civic hospital workers, gutter cleaners or sanitation workers on contract....

...In Delhi, it is a humongous many-mouthed subterranean creature — a network of 5,600 km of sewers with about 1.5 lakh manholes,... which consumes 2,781 million litres of the sewage Delhi generates daily... It is indiscriminately fed a wide range of objects that causes clogs — condoms, sanitary pads, nondegradable thermocol, a variety of plastics, industrial sludge, kitchen waste, toilet cleaning acids, medical waste (syringes, blades, even placenta), glass shards, household gadgets, construction debris.... 

...Entering the narrow, dark drain, the worker pushes his only weapon, the khapchi — a spliced bamboo stick — to dislodge the block... It is then that a sudden blast of putrid sludge — besides methane, hydrogen sulphide, carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide — assaults the person. “Even if we manage not to swallow the toxic muck, it manages to enter our bodies.” Odourless and colourless, the carbon gases can cause suffocation. If the worker survives the initial ordeal, he crouches inside and loads the sludge into leaky metal buckets or wicker baskets for his team to haul out. Depending on the clog, the entire operation could take up to 48 hours. “We often work after midnight. When people sleep, the flow in the sew- ers is lesser, and our work does not disturb road-users,”...

...The CEC’s 2005 survey of 200 DJB manhole workers found that... 91.5 percent of them (were)from suffering injuries and 80 percent suffering eye infections. The survey found that diseases like leptospirosis, viral hepatitis and typhoid were common....

...Not surprisingly, most of the workers die before retirement. Owing to loss of appetite and inevitable alcoholism, many men shrink to half their size if they work 20 years. The average lifespan of a manhole worker is about 45. And if a worker does not die inside a manhole, the civic body does not offer any monetary compensation for illnesses/deaths owing to occupational hazards. In Delhi, permanent workers get a monthly “risk allowance” of Rs 50..."

The CEC (Center for Education and Communication) also reported that among those who worked in the manholes:


Few workers in age group 50-59; most die before retirement


35 percent illiteracy


Monthly wage for daily wagers Rs 2,950


More than 40 percent of workers are not permanent though more than 90 percent of them have been working for more than five years continuously


60 percent of workers enter manholes more than 10 times a month


Acute illnesses: 
- eye irritation (79%), 
- upper respiratory tract irritation (57%), 
- difficulty in breathing (38%), 
- skin rash (60.5%), 
- cut and injury (91.5%). 


Chronic illnesses: 
- fatigue (76%), 
- watering/burning of eyes (36%), 
- cough (72.5%), 
- skin irritation (41%), 
- skin roughness (36%), 
- skin rash (45.5%), 
- lower backache (27%)

Hardly the life-conditions for "spiritual enlightenment" or experiencing the "yeh suhana mausam" (this lovely weather)!.... And if one wants to move out/up to the metaphorical state of a sonar, wouldn't that be natural?

Maybe that is why we need to map caste-based discrimination on a contunuum of Subliminal to Sublimated... 
 
UNQUOTE
 
TEHELKA LINK : http://www.tehelka.com/story_main36.asp?filename=Ne081207LIFE_INSIDE.asp
 
CEC LINK (from ASIA MONITOR RESOURCE CETRE) : http://www.amrc.org.hk/alu_article/discrimination_at_work/caste_based_discrimination_in_india_hidden_apartheid_for_dalits
 
 
Kshmendra
 

--- On Sun, 7/20/08, Ranjith Thankappan <ranjit_hcu at yahoo.co.in> wrote:

From: Ranjith Thankappan <ranjit_hcu at yahoo.co.in>
Subject: [Reader-list] Filth of tradition continues...
To: "sarai" <reader-list at sarai.net>
Date: Sunday, July 20, 2008, 11:21 AM

Printer Friendly Version 
Schools, Toilets Or Temples? 
By Pardeep
19 July, 2008
Countercurrents.org

“Many people would rather die than think, infact most do.” - Bertrand
Russell 
Few days back The Endowment Department of Andhra Pradesh (Warangal) decided
they will establish “Institute of Temple Management”, which would offer
courses & will train people for managing temple activities effectively.
Facilities like “Sarva darsanam” &”prasadam” for Rs 5 will be
provided at all the 34,000 temples in the state. (Indian Express 13th April,
2008) i.e. to visit temples for Darsanam you need to pay!! 
I was wondering there are not even half the numbers of secondary schools in the
state!! Total number of secondary schools in Andhra Pradesh according to
National Information Centre is not more than 15000 (approx.) (about 10000 in
rural area & 5000 in urban area)!!!
At every street corner we have built temples but not toilets or schools &
afterwards killing each other on the name of same God!! How shameful it is!!
India is the only country with so many Gods, well wishers (I’ll say fake
Gods) but still poor in many fields!! 
In Andhra Pradesh (South India), 52 upper primary schools were operating
without a building in 2002, while in 1993, there was none!!!
The sub-Saharan Africa countries where people don’t even get enough food but
literacy rate is higher (61.2%) than India (61%) - Source: 2000-2004 data from
the Education for All Global Monitoring Report, UNESCO (2006)!!
The Fifth All India Educational Survey (AIES) revealed that approximately 94%
of the national population had access to a primary school within 1 km of their
habitation (NCERT, 1990). But how many even complete primary educations? This
is the main question. Isn’t it? Many teachers even register the names of
students who never even see the face of schools!!
There is another worrisome part an emerging trend whereby children belonging to
different social backgrounds are attending different kinds of schools. In Andhra
Pradesh, there is a divide between the government primary school (GPS) located
in the Dalit basti and the GPS in the forward caste hamlet — only SC students
attend the former school, while the latter has very few SC students. The youth
in the SC colony in the village categorically stated that even if children from
the SC colony try to seek admission in the other GPS, they are discouraged and
told to attend the school in their own colony. A similar divide was observed in
Tamil Nadu between the GPS and the schools run by the Adi-Dravida Welfare Board.
(From “Beyond the numbers” study conducted by Vimala Ramachandran)
A school (from Greek scholeion) is an institute designed to allow and encourage
students to learn. What these Indian schools will encourage where students
don’t even find teachers in the schools (A survey showed about 25% teachers
were not present at school time & another half was busy with other than
educational activities like making voting cards & doing some surveys)!! Not
much infrastructure, not even buildings!! What will encourage students here??
But how shameful that our Govts are more concerned about the salaries of temple
employees & in building houses for them!! Govts themselves don’t want to
give much intention towards education as most of them consider this is not
profitable business!!
How is India doing in terms of the common measures of schooling quality, namely
school facilities and teacher effort? The Public Report on Basic Education
(PROBE Team, 1999) was the first serious evidence-based study of the state of
primary schooling quality in India. It is based on a survey of schooling
facilities in 242 villages across five north Indian states Bihar, Madhya
Pradesh, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and Himachal Pradesh in 1996. PROBE found
very poor school infrastructure, e.g. 26% of schools did not have a blackboard
in every classroom, 52% had no playground, 59% no drinking water, 89% no
toilet, 59% no maps or charts, 75% no toys, 77% no library and 85% no musical
instruments (PROBE Team, 1999).
India’s economic growth rates have generated much hype about its general
economic development. But has there been accompanying progress in indicators of
educational outcomes? How good are Indian educational achievements in relation
to China’s, the country with which India has habit of being compared? What
are the most significant developments in Indian school education and what has
been the impact of various education policy initiatives? There is big question
mark over all these & many other questions!!

Build more Toilets rather than Temples!! 
It’s to be kept in mind that most of the diseases/deaths are caused by
polluted drinking water. Less than 50% of India's population has toilets in
their homes. Our cities look like extended slums, towns are filthy dumps and
villages often smell strongly like excreta. It’s interesting to note Hindus
consider cleanliness important but task of cleanliness impure, lower!! Don’t
this contradicting? 

In the book "Area of Darkness" (written in 1964) V.S. Naipaul
explores an extremely dark account of India and details how dirty the country
is. Naipaul in his books writes that elsewhere in world approach to villages
through countryside is a pleasant experience but not in India where visitor to
villages is welcomed by smell of human excreta. He observed it in decades of
70s but it is still true in most of villages in India.
The dry latrines and open fields that people are forced to defecate in are
cleaned by “manual scavengers” – humans, 99% percent of whom are Dalits
and 90% of whom are women, who are made to clean them with a simple broom and
basket. In India, manual scavenging is a caste-based occupation carried out by
dalits. The manual scavengers have different caste names in different parts of
the country: bhangis in Gujarat, pakhis in Andhra Pradesh, and sikkaliars in
Tamil Nadu.
The Employment of Manual Scavengers and Construction of Dry Latrines
(Prohibition) Act was enacted in 1993, but has proved ineffective in
eliminating manual scavenging. The Act prohibits the employment of manual
scavengers or construction of dry latrines not connected to proper drainage
channels and violations of the provisions of the Act can lead to imprisonment
for up to one year and/or a fine of up to 2000 rupees. In 1989 there were
600,000 scavengers while by 1995-96 the number had increased to 787,000 (a 31.6
% increase in less than a decade). Similarly, there were 720,500,000 dry
latrines in 1989, but by January 2000 the number had increased by 9,600,000.
With the increase of urbanization, manual scavenging is increasing. More and
more Dalits are compelled to take the job as the changing economic scenario is
offering less and less jobs for them.
Gujarat’s C.M. Narendra Modi, glorifies this inhumane occupation of Dalits.
In his recent book, Karmayog, Modi states, “Scavenging must have been a
spiritual experience for the Valmiki caste.” He further goes on to say, “At
some point in time somebody must have got enlightenment in scavenging. They must
have thought that it is their duty to work for the happiness of the entire
society and the Gods.”
“If this occupation is such a spiritual enlightenment experience, why
doesn’t Mr. C.M. take up this job & get enlightened?”
All this & many other points show how much our own Govts are concerned on
developing safe & progressing environment. Our Governments are sleeping;
young people are yelling, future (children) is in dark!! 
What we need!!

· New localities with amenities like hi-tech schools, sanitation, water etc
for better lives of people.

· More job opportunities for poor people those are involved in manual
scavenging, so as they can quit this inhuman job & can live with dignity.

· More new schools, special schools for poor children those involved in manual
scavenging.

· More scholarships for poor needy students.

· There should be made provision if any manual scavenging case comes from
particular area, concerned authorities should be panelized for that.

· Free books distribution for all students.


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