Assem Hasnain and Avinav Kumar (alumni from PFM 1999-2001 batch) and Dr. Abhilasha write a thought-provoking and insightful piece on manual scavenging in India.
84 years since Gandhi’s vision, 70 years after Ambedkar’s institutionalization of reservations, and despite several decades of mobilization and protests by Dalit activists, we are still looking for the ‘Ideal Bhangi.’ This search has now turned into an anxiety. Dalits can be made ‘Heroes,’ essential workers, public servants, and they are symbolically revered if the need be, but their status is set in stone. They are and wishfully will remain sanitation workers. The destiny of their birth, as well as their children, and their children is fixed. And no known force has been able to change it.
Read the full article here..
