Sewage, Slavery, and Manual Scavengers

India is a diverse land of many cultures, with bustling cities, modern infrastructure, and is one of the most rapidly developing nations and economies in the world. However, hidden away from the perception of the world, it harbors many deep, dark, and foreboding secrets, some being remnants of a bygone era, and some newer, more destructive patterns from improper adoption of western culture into traditions and patriarchal systems that stretch back to time immemorial. This paper aims to explore one of these relics of the past that plagues the modern era, and hopefully, bring the plight of so many, to the light of the sun. The practice of manual scavenging, the manual cleaning of human waste from dry latrines, treated with the same rules as it was several hundred years ago, is a shadow, a blight on a country that aims to be “Swachh Bharat”.