India's Female Scavengers Enslaved By Caste & Gender Discrimination
A woman sits next to a fire in her house at Dalit village of Bhaddi Kheda in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh.
January 15, 2012
REUTERS
MUMBAI (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - New legislation in India to crack down on the practice of forcing mainly the poorest women to clear other people's excreta will have little impact unless deeply entrenched sexism and caste bias are changed, activists said.
Manual scavenging, a euphemism for disposing of faeces from dry toilets and open drains by hand, has long been an occupation thrust upon members of the Dalit group, traditionally the lowest ranked in India's caste system.
At least 90 percent of India's estimated 1.3 million manual scavengers are women, according to campaign group Jan Sahas.
"It is not just a case of caste discrimination, but also gender discrimination, as women are forced to do this basest of jobs," said Ashif Shaikh, founder of Jan Sahas, which says it has liberated more than 21,000 Dalit women from the practice.
"It is not even a job, it's slavery," he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. "The women do not have a choice, they are paid a pittance, and are threatened with violence if they quit. There's a lot of pressure from the village, the community, and their own families."
India, which banned caste-based discrimination in 1955, has passed several laws to end manual scavenging with government pledges to modernize sanitation and criminalize those who employ manual scavengers. Legislation passed in December further tightened penalties.
Yet Dalit communities continue to face threats of violence, eviction and withholding of wages if they try to give up the practice, human rights groups say.
In 2014, Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched a "Clean India Mission" to improve sanitation in the fast-growing economy and increase funding for public toilets to end open defecation.
The campaign has helped draw attention to the plight of manual scavengers and forced state governments to act, Shaikh said. The government offers 40,000 rupees ($590) to each rescued manual scavenger and training for alternate jobs.
Yet crimes against lower-caste Indians are rising. There were more than 47,000 such crimes in 2014, an increase of about a fifth from the previous year, according to official figures.
The Copenhagen-based International Dalit Solidarity Network has called manual scavenging, a "caste-based and hereditary occupation form of slavery".
Paid less than a minimum wage, manual scavengers are often forced to borrow money from their higher-caste employers, leading to debt bondage.
The government estimated in 2011 that more than 180,000 rural households are engaged in manual scavenging. Western Maharashtra state, which topped the list, had set a deadline of the end of March to end the practice.
"We have provided incentives in rural areas to build toilets, and we have offered alternative employment to these people in some districts," said U.S. Lonare, a senior official in the state's social justice department.
He did not say if the deadline will be met.
Jan Sahas' Shaikh said the new legislation must be implemented in full.
"Even one woman forced to do this work is a shame," he said. "It's a crime."
India has passed several laws to end manual scavenging with government pledges to modernize sanitation and criminalize those who employ manual scavengers. Yet Dalit communities continue to face threats of violence, eviction and withholding of wages if they try to give up the practice, human rights groups say. And crimes against lower-caste Indians are rising. There were more than 47,000 such crimes in 2014, an increase of about a fifth from the previous year, according to official figures. Reuters
Link to Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-india-scavenging-women-idUSKCN0W503U
The National Campaign Against Torture (NCAT) in its “India: Annual Report on Torture 2019” released on the occasion of the International Day in Support of Victims of Torture stated that a total of 1,731 persons died in custody during 2019 i.e. deaths of about five persons daily. These included 1,606 deaths in judicial custody and 125 deaths in police custody.
Torture is perpetrated to extract confession or bribes and torture methods used in 2019 included hammering iron nails in the body (Bihar), applying roller on legs and burning (Jammu & Kashmir), ‘falanga’ wherein the soles of the feet are beaten (Kerala), stretching legs apart in opposite side (Kerala), hitting in private parts (Haryana), electric shock (Punjab and Uttar Pradesh), pouring petrol in private parts (Uttar Pradesh), applying chilly power in private parts (Kerala) beating while being hand-cuffed (Kerala), pricking needle into body (3-Year-old minor in Tamil Nadu), branding with hot iron rod (3-Year-old minor in Tamil Nadu), beating after stripping (Haryana and Assam), urinating in mouth (Uttar Pradesh), inserting hard blunt object into anus (Bihar), beating after hanging upside down with hands and legs tied (Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh), forcing to perform oral sex (Gujarat), pressing finger nails with pliers (Assam), beating with iron rods after victim is suspended between two tables with both hands and legs tied (Madhya Pradesh), forced to do Murga pose or stress position (Haryana), and kicking in belly of pregnant woman (Assam).
Indian police officers in the town of Nagina chased a group of Muslim teenagers into an empty house. They grabbed them and took them to a makeshift jail. And then, the boys and community leaders said, the officers tortured them.
Four of the boys, who ranged in age from 13 to 17, said that police officers used wooden canes to beat them and threatened to kill them.
Indian Police officers over the course of 30 hours terrorized them.
According to two of the boys, the officers laughed during beatings, saying, “You will die in this prison.”
More accounts are emerging of abuse meted out by police officers.
Almost all the violence has been directed toward Muslim residents. More people — at least 19 — have been killed!
Witnesses said that police officers opened fire on demonstrators with live ammunition, broke into houses and stole money, and threatened to rape women.
Police officers were encouraged by their superiors to kill protesters.
The Indian police have become a lynch mob! Inidan police officers having been given the green light by senior officials to use harsh measures against Muslims.
A 20-year-old Dalit man was allegedly burnt alive over his relationship with a woman from another caste, the killing causing his mother to die of shock.
The victim was beaten up, kept hostage in a house and set ablaze.
Locals rushed to the spot on hearing his cries and took him to a local hospital. He was referred to a Lucknow hospital but succumbed to injuries on the way.
India : Hyderabad : Andhra Pradesh Telangana2018-09-20
A father attacked his 20-year-old daughter and her newlywed husband in the heart of the city on Wednesday, chopping off her left forearm and slashing her jaw. The incident comes days after a Dalit youth was mercilessly murdered in front his pregnant wife in Nalgonda district.
Police said the father was upset over the inter-caste marriage — the woman an OBC (Other Backward Class), her husband, B Sandeep (22), a Dalit. Sandeep and Madhavi Chary, in a relationship for five years, secretly got married on September 12, despite stiff opposition from her father.
Madhavi was left with a 12-inch gash on her neck and jawline and her left forearm barely hung by the skin. She was in a 10-hour surgery at the time of going to print. Sandeep, in another hospital, received 10 stitches to close the deep wound at the angle of his mouth; the attending doctors said he was in deep shock.
