conducted for 26 years without
proper and correct estimation of
the number of manual scavengers
languishing in India. It is claimed
that the state governments are not
cooperating in the surveys today
the fact of the existence of manual
scavenging and that they have
failed in implementing the law and
rehabilitation of the manual
scavengers.
The task force intended to
survey merely by holding one or two
camps in each district and asking
the manual scavengers to register
them-selves (self registration
camps), which is not at all a proper
method for a true survey. It has
been a reality that in many cases,
the manual cases found it difficult
to pay for their conveyance to the
survey camps situated at far off
places and unable to register them-selves. Moreover according
to NGO’s there were reports of
people(manual
scavengers)
coming to submit the forms of self-
registration have been turned
away by the district officials.
Such has been the callous
attitude of the administration; and
the ruling governments with
regards to the scourge of manual
scavenging persistently existing in
India and about the uplift of
economic and social lives of
manual scavengers.
That “the governments do not
even want to acknowledge the
existence of manual scavengers,
let alone care for their welfare” has
been rightly commented by Ankur
Singh of participatory research in
India. Yes!. The manual scave-
ngers are the forsaken lot of
modern India!
contd from page 21 The neo-liberal economic
policies implemented in our country
at the behest of imperialism, had
pushed the agricultural sector of
our country in to a deep all round
crisis resulting in untold rural
distress forcing the rural poor to
migrate in to cities and urban areas
even at far distant places from their
native states to eke out a living.
These distressed rural poor are
working in the unorganized sector
without any entitlements for social
security and are being made
ineligible to such meager entitle-
ments on flimsy legalistic
technicalities costing their lives,
leading to hunger deaths or
deaths in industrial accidents as
orphans having no one to come to
their rescue including the so-called
democratically elected govern-
ments which are supposed for their
rule.
Such has been the stark reality
of hunger-deaths in our country.
These hunger-deaths shame our
society that is incapable of
protecting its members from the
death-knell of hunger!
illness even against the clear proof
of autopsies conducted twice on
the children that revealed that they
had neither food nor water in their
bodies.
On the other hand between
the centre and state governments
a typical blame game is being
enacted, diverting the attention
from the stark reality of hunger
deaths- a perpetuity in India.
We all should be ashamed
about this sorry and tragic state of
our country and for allowing it to
continue unchecked.
In fact the horrendous story of
hunger-deaths is not limited and
belongs to those particular
families. On the contrary it is the
story of all the families of “India’s
vast unorganized sector that faced
a series of economic shocks with
no systematic support” as has
been rightly opined by Ms
Geetanjali
Krishna,
who
accompanied the fact-finding
commission on the hunger deaths
of the children instituted by the
Right to Food campaign and
Centre for Equity Studies, Delhi.
October - 2018
contd from page 24
workers. Rather it acted hand in
glove with the hucksters, known as
owners of gardens, to drain out the
funds paid from the state
exchequer to help the tea gardens
to overcome the crisis, which is
mostly created by themselves. The
tea bushes have mostly crossed
the life limit. It is expected that there
should be no tea bush of more than
40 years. But the owners do not
make any provisions to plant new
bushes. Same is the situation of
the shade trees. As a result the
quality is getting down.
Now the owners have taken
the policy of closing the gardens
the moment the workers demands
their rightful wages and other
facilities. Workers are dying. Those
who are living are moving around
sick and weak. Once their
ancestors left whatever they had
and now they have nowhere to go.
They have to live and die in the
gardens. They are treated like
slaves.
Now they are trying to
organize; but that too has become
difficult. Some union leaders
having close association with
powers-that-be go on flexing their
muscles.
But limit of exploitation has
crossed. The workers are trying to
get organized throwing off all
terrorization. They know unite they
will have to. They will have to fight
not only for themselves but also to
change the state which is standing
behind the owners.
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