When Sumitra bai of Barotha village reached her in-laws place after getting married, her mother in-law handed over her ancestor’s property to the new bride. The reward was doing scavenging work of 25 houses. The practice of scavenging did not exist even among the uncivilized society, but with development and man becoming more civilized the ugly face of civilized society has come up in form of one human working for another human in this form. Researchers and social scientists working on this issue believe lack of sensitivity and social constraints as the major factor to make this community more vulnerable rather than financial constraints. With strong will power and determination, Sumitra bai tried hard to come out of the vicious circle, and it has been more than two years from now that she has stopped doing this job. Searching for new alternatives she took loans of Rs.20000/- under Antavavsaya yojana from National bank for self-employment. With this opportunity coming up on her way she was very exited and positive about future of her children. With this incentive Sumitra bai started a cloth shop in the village but the route to success was full of thorns. After opening the shop she was optimistic and opened her shop sharp in the morning and sat till late night, but as not even a single piece of cloth got sold from her shop till three months, she lost her passions. A voice was spread against her in the village that she was selling cloths of burial place. Helplessly, Sumitra bai had to shut down her shop and thus the happy dream got ruined. Still not losing her self-confidence, Sumitra kept on trying out for other opportunities, but time took its own toil and after one and a half year of continues struggle she was left with no options but to step into the same previous job, thus she started scavenging work again.

A one-time administrative officer and now a social worker Mr. Harsh Mandar working on this issue says that this question is of self-esteem and dignity; and no financial assistance/ help or government schemes can search an answer to this question. There is a urge to make sincere efforts from both sides, firstly this vulnerable community should stop doing this work and secondly, the society should accepts this vulnerable community by giving them equal status with out any discretion.  Going through the statistical figures the government has spent Rs.144/- crores in one decade, but has still failed to free these families from such inhuman treatment. Thus although the government keeps boasting about its efforts, all these tall talks sound baseless.

The agenda of “Dalit equality” started by the government of Madhya Pradesh has got highrecognization worldwide; in this agenda the government had strongly claimed that it would attach all the latrines with drainage till April 2003. But in reality there are still over 78 thousand latrines, in the state, which have no access to drainage and around 18 thousand people work to keep them clean. According to the information provided by Rastriya Safai Karamchari Ayoug, there are 16 districts in the state (Madhya Pradesh) were such practice has taken shape in form of business. The most important point in this regard is that the initiatives taken up by the government fail to nail the actual required changes in terms of social attitude, besides this the benefits provided (what so even) have not reached the target group. As per the claims made by the administration, the welfare schemes would link the children of these vulnerable families with the mainstream for this stress has been given on their education. For enabling the children to join white color job educational incentives have been provided in which, an amount of Rs.750/- is given every year to children as scholarship. How even this scheme has shown adverse results, for example when three women of village Bissani of Panna district decided to leave this occupation, the first reward they got was in form of their children not getting this scholarship. One of these women Anita Valmiki says that with this scholarship she was at least able to buy books and cloths for her children, but now with no benefits things seem tougher. Government believes that as soon as these families leave this work of scavenging they get other job, but in reality this assumption is not true rather they even loss the benefits they were getting before. As Shanti bai of Bagli teshil of Devas district states that by doing this work her family use to get one leftover roti from each house every day and old clothes as incentive at time of festivals. Besides, this as they worked as slaves for the upper class (influential), these families used to help them when even in crises. But after leaving this work no one is ready to help them and whole village has boycotted them. Not only this Shanti bai is not even given work of laborer saying that as she used to do scavengery how can she do labor work? In a similar incidence Munni bai of Ghandarva pura village in Devas district was asked to take help from those who recommended her to leave this work. Education is although fundamental right and government is bond to provided free education to children below 14 years of age, these government schools in all the districts are charging fees of Rs.30/- per month from each child. This leaves very less options for the vulnerable community to educate their children.

The inequality gap between the upper class and valmiki class has got so widened that the previous section is not ready to accept that the valmiki class get freed from this profession. On the other hand the latter section (Valmiki class) strongly feels to be neglected. As per one of the studies conducted to evaluate the Garima Abhiyan, which is engaged in removing the practice of scavenging, it was known that out of 531 families taken up in the survey 503 families were such where only females did the work of scavenging. There is a cultural practice that as soon as the new bride reaches her in-laws place she gets the hereditary work of doing scavenging work in 20-25 households. The most shocking finding in this report was that this vulnerable community constitution of Badhai, Charmkar, Bargudda and Bherva although have been highly exploited and tortured still believe that the Valmili society should continue with this occupation because it is their social responsibility. The economic analysis of benefits derived in this occupation is also very interesting. It is believed that as the Valmiki communities’ main source of income is through this occupation thus due to there dependencies for basic survival, the 18 thousand families engaged in this occupation are reluctant to leave this work. However, while going through the figures it is noted that they get Rs.5-20/- per month for doing scavenging work of one household and they work in maximum 25 households. This means each family gets a meager amount of Rs.125-500/-per month for doing this undignified job, besides getting some old cloths and sweets at time of festivals or other occasions. As said by Rakha bai of Tonkh , “I have to pay high price for earning Rs.400/- per month “.

The Valmiki community faces unimaginable torture of untouchability, the practice of keeping separate glasses (that too broken ones which cannot be general used), for serving tea or water for this community is still prevalent in the tea shops of small towns and cities. In three hundred and fifty villages of Devas, Panna, Hoshangabad, Shajapur, Harda and Mansor districts the barbers do not cut hairs of Valmiki, Balai and charmakar community. Vishnu Valmiki of Amlataj village says that they have to spend Rs.65-70/- at one time for hair cut and shaving beard. As he stated as “we have to go to Sonkattach amount of Rs.20/-is spent on traveling, while the barber takes Rs.15/- for cutting and shaving and as whole day is spent in this we have to forgo our labor work of Rs.35/-

The narrow vision of government in taking up this issue is the major reason for its failures, one of the members of Rastriya safai Karmachari Ayog Mr. Shankar Prasad says that although the central government is constantly instructing the state government from past eight years to take up this issue. But the responsible officers are not sensitive towards this issue and a rule has been passed that if any person is found working in this occupation and no legal action is taken in this regard than the district officer will be held responsible for such negligence. With no serious actions been taken up by the central government on 13 serious orders and three related rules for its implementation and evaluation one can imagine how serious the government is in taken up this issue. Although it is the state government responsibility to implement necessary policies that, would help in eradicate this practice, whatever action so far taken up reflects insensitivity of the government in handling this issue. This becomes clearer while going through the impact of the implemented schemes, for example, under the Anathyavavsai yojana, started by government of providing skill development training for 6 months to those women who leave in this cheap undignified job, 30 women of Soghpur teshil of Hoshangavad district were provided training for making idols. As these women were working as scavengers previously it took time for them to learn the skill of idol making, and they demanded to extend their training, which was turned down by the administration by saying that the yojana did not have such provision. Thus even after getting the training these women could not get benefits of this scheme.

With more than 70 thousand dry latrines still existing, 36 districts of Madhya Pradesh including Panna and Devas claim that work of scavenging has stopped in their area. The best example is Kamlapur police station of Devas, which still has a katcha toilet. All the Municipal offices of Madhya Pradesh recruit people of this community for carrying out work of cleanness. In reality the upper class believes that it is the responsibility of this community to do this type of work.

With sincere efforts of Garima Abhayan it has been able to motivate over 600 females engaged in this occupation to leave it, but with time it has been realized that the pressure of again taking up the work of scavenging is increasing among these women, and the evidence of this is that out of these total 600 women 30 have again joined this profession. Thus reason is clean that this is not a matter of leaving or adopting one profession but the matter is of taking up challenge against the biasness set up by the society.

Sachin Kumar Jain