New Delhi, August 23, 2025: On August 6, 2024, the Supreme Court of India confronted an uncomfortable reality: even outside its own Gate F, men were cleaning sewers with bare hands and no safety gear, in a practice banned for decades. Photographs, submitted by Senior Advocate and amicus curiae K. Parameshwar, revealed workers waist-deep in filth, an image that shook the bench but also laid bare India’s entrenched culture of impunity. The Court had only a year earlier, in Dr. Balram Singh v. Union of India (2023), ordered a phased end to manual sewer cleaning. Yet here it was, happening at the Court’s doorstep.

The bench led by Justices Sudhanshu Dhulia and Aravind Kumar demanded accountability, instructing the Public Works Department and East Delhi Municipal Corporation to explain their reliance on manual labour. A warning followed: unsatisfactory responses could lead to criminal prosecutions. The outrage was real, but so was the irony, if the highest court’s orders are ignored outside its own gates, what happens across India’s countless cities and towns?

Laws, Protests, and Court Orders

India’s efforts to outlaw manual scavenging are decades old. The 1993 Employment of Manual Scavengers and Construction of Dry Latrines Act was the first attempt, but it barely dented the practice. The 2013 Act the Prohibition of Employment as Manual Scavengers and their Rehabilitation Act went further, banning not only scavenging but also sewer and septic cleaning without safety equipment, while promising rehabilitation.

Activists like Bezwada Wilson of the Safai Karmachari Andolan consistently pushed the issue into public debate. Through PILs, hunger strikes, and marches, they highlighted the hypocrisy of laws ignored on the ground. A milestone came in 2014 with Safai Karamchari Andolan v. Union of India, where the Supreme Court declared sewer deaths to be a constitutional violation of Articles 17 (abolition of untouchability), 21 (right to life), and 23 (ban on forced labour). The bench ordered ₹10 lakh compensation for each death since 1993 and stricter enforcement.

In Balram Singh (2023), the Court reiterated that unsafe manual sewer cleaning amounts to forced labour, and directed complete mechanisation. Rehabilitation was to be made simple and direct, with no endless hurdles for workers to access entitlements. Yet, despite this legal arsenal, practice on the ground remains unchanged.

The Death Toll

Between 2019 and 2023, the government recorded 377 deaths from sewer and septic cleaning. In 2023, there were 63 deaths; in 2024, 52; and by mid-2025, already 72, including 10 in June alone. A 2022-23 audit revealed that over 90% of these deaths occurred without protective gear.

Activists argue the real numbers are higher. According to the Safai Karmachari Andolan (Sanitation Workers’ Movement), at least 1,760 people have died since 1993. Each fatality is preventable caused by suffocation from poisonous gases, drowning in filth, or infections from unprotected contact. These are not accidents; they are systemic killings caused by negligence and discrimination.

Why It Persists

Despite bans, sewer deaths persist because officials prefer cheap quick fixes over investing in mechanisation. Contractors exploit economic incentives: paying a worker ₹500 is cheaper than deploying machines or training staff. Most workers belong to Dalit communities, long forced into stigmatized sanitation work by caste hierarchies, with few alternatives for livelihood.

Accountability vanishes in layers of subcontracting municipalities blame contractors, contractors blame subcontractors, and the loss of human life becomes no one’s responsibility. Over time, this has created what sociologist Diane Vaughan calls the “normalisation of deviance” – a culture where breaking the law becomes routine. Political economist Francis Fukuyama argues that such institutional weakness erodes the state’s legitimacy: exactly what is visible here.

Patchy State and Central Efforts

The central government’s NAMASTE scheme, launched in July 2023, is India’s flagship intervention for eliminating manual scavenging and hazardous sewer cleaning. The scheme, with a budget of ₹349.73 crore, aims to mechanize sanitation, identify and rehabilitate workers, and provide PPE kits, capital subsidies, and skill training. As of August 2025, notable progress includes the validation of 84,902 sewer and septic tank workers across 4,800 urban local bodies, distribution of 45,871 PPE kits, and release of ₹20.36 crore in subsidies for 707 sanitation-related projects.

Over 54,000 beneficiaries have received health insurance under Ayushman Bharat and state schemes. Additionally, 1,089 workshops on hazardous cleaning prevention have been held, and nearly 38,000 waste pickers are being integrated into welfare coverage.

Kerala has been a pioneer in human-free sewer cleaning, deploying the indigenous Bandicoot robots since 2018. These robots, now in use not just in Kerala but also in states like Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Haryana, and Punjab, can clean a sewer in 15-45 minutes and are operated by sanitation workers retrained as robot operators. In 2024, Bandicoot robots cleared 12-13 sewage chambers per day in cities like Chhatrapati Sambhaji Nagar, and more than 200 sanitation workers have been trained as robot operators under rehabilitation programmes. Municipal partnerships have even exported this technology, with a Memorandum of Understanding signed with Dubai’s sanitation authorities.

Tamil Nadu scaled up its deployment of mechanized cleaning, rolling out 200 machines in 2023, and began rehabilitation for 7,000 workers identified as manual scavengers. Similar robot deployments and skill programs for workers are expanding in cities like Coimbatore and Thanjavur.

Delhi has introduced drones for site monitoring and distributed PPE kits, but the Supreme Court’s 2024 incident revealed that on-the-ground practices often lag behind official claims. Emergency Response Sanitation Units (ERSUs) have been established in several urban centers to respond to and minimize hazardous cleaning events.

Maharashtra’s Self-Employment Scheme for Rehabilitation of Manual Scavengers offers up to ₹10 lakh for alternative enterprise, for example, to start businesses or purchase mechanized vehicles. Chhatrapati Sambhaji Nagar’s rapid robot adoption has been cited as a success, but manual entry still occurs where infrastructure and funding gaps exist.

Despite these gains, challenges persist. Surveys are incomplete, with many sanitation workers left untracked or misclassified. Funding shortfalls and bureaucratic leakages delay the delivery of benefits – even as over 21,000 sanitation workers out of 28,700 surveyed have been formally validated. Rehabilitation rarely leads to stable jobs or lasting economic mobility, and many workers remain unaware or unable to access schemes because of complex documentation, social stigma, and lack of local follow-up.

The upshot is that, while some states are innovating, the overall pace of mechanization and worker transition remains uneven and slow, with preventable deaths and hazardous manual entry still reported across the country into 2025.

International Guidelines and Global Standards

Globally, the persistence of sewer deaths in India stands out as a tragedy of neglect.

1. United States – OSHA Regulations: Under the Occupational Safety and Health Administration’s Confined Spaces Standard (29 CFR 1910.146), no worker can enter a sewer without protective equipment, oxygen monitoring, and a “buddy system.” Employers face severe fines or shut-downs for violations.

2. European Union – Workplace Safety Framework Directive (89/391/EEC): Requires employers to eliminate risks at source, mandating mechanisation for hazardous tasks. Human entry into sewers is considered an extreme last resort, subject to special permits and safety oversight.

3. International Labour Organization (ILO) Conventions: Article 3 of the Occupational Safety and Health Convention, 1981 (No. 155) obliges governments to ensure the elimination of health risks in workplaces. Sewer deaths, as preventable occupational fatalities, fall squarely into this category.

4. UN Human Rights Perspective: The UN has called manual scavenging a form of “modern-day slavery”, linked to caste discrimination, violating the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Articles 23 and 25).

5. Other Countries’ Practices:

   • Japan and South Korea have fully mechanised sewer cleaning, with advanced robotic systems.

   • China uses low-cost mechanised pumps in every urban municipal unit.

   • South Africa enforces protective regulations in urban centres with strong union oversight.

The contrast is stark: where the world treats sewer entry as a last resort regulated by rigorous safeguards, India treats it as business as usual.

Caste and Governance

At its heart, this is not just about technology, it is about caste and systemic indifference. Around 77% of sanitation workers in India are Dalits(a person who belongs to one of the lowest castes), historically pushed into this labour through stigma, exclusion, and the rigid hierarchy of untouchability. Their work sustains modern urban life, but their own lives are treated as disposable. The persistence of manual scavenging reveals that the Indian state is willing to tolerate death as routine, so long as it remains hidden in the gutters and manholes occupied by those deemed the “lowest” in the social order.

Caste pushes these workers into dangerous jobs and then keeps them there: lack of education, continued social ostracism, and denial of opportunities force many families into an intergenerational trap. Even when rehabilitation or alternative livelihoods are offered, prejudice in society makes it harder for Dalit workers to secure dignified jobs. As a result, many return to hazardous sanitation work simply to survive.

Governance failures feed this system. Local authorities, contractors, and civic bodies often collude in keeping costs low at the expense of safety, knowing that those who risk death have little power to protest or seek justice. This intersection of caste hierarchy and institutional neglect makes manual scavenging not just a policy failure but a moral and constitutional betrayal – one that cuts to the very idea of equality guaranteed by the Indian state.

The Supreme Court’s own gate becoming the site of a banned practice is symbolic, it shows laws can be mocked with impunity. India has the machines, the money, and the legal framework to end sewer deaths. What is missing is not capacity, but urgency and political will.

Machines exist, yet men still die. Laws exist, yet prosecutions are rare. Compensation exists, yet families wait years. Other countries treat sewer entry as an emergency, tightly regulated; India treats it as routine, outsourced to Dalits.

So, the question remains: how many more workers must suffocate underground before India proves to its own people and the world that every human life truly matters?